tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13917990447355188562018-03-06T12:34:49.879-07:00Restless WandererDavid Knowltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12525999021776853508noreply@blogger.comBlogger56125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391799044735518856.post-40994793876797001732017-12-20T11:34:00.002-07:002017-12-20T16:12:15.923-07:00Nina and the Third Grade<div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">She had just come from Mexico and I sat at a small desk behind her. She was not at all like the girls from Las Vegas, New Mexico where I lived before we moved to El Paso. Even her name seemed exotic.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">Nina had long, dark brown hair. It draped her shoulders like a shawl and she did not slouch. &nbsp;She sat upright and was more possessed than the rest of the kids.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"></span><br /><a name='more'></a></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">They spread themselves over the desks and chairs in this third grade classroom of the Zach White School as if those were not set in tight rows. The others belonged to a strange world of their own, one that did not draw me.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">Nina’s did, though I did not know anything about her, yet, but that she had just come from Colonia Juarez or maybe Dublán, Mexico where her family ranched.</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">My family now lived close to the border. On one side of the often dry river everything seemed charged. It smelled different and was filled with sounds and tastes unlike those of my home or my neighborhood in El Paso.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">And El Paso was not at all like Las Vegas. It was much larger and dryer. The sun beat intensely most days of the year and instead of piñon clad hills, the mountains were baked by the sun and dry while around them stretched deserts of creosote, cactus, and ocotillo.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">Downtown, a small tangle of tall buildings guarded the plaza where they had a fountain with baby alligators. To the north stretched streets with established families, while to the south was the river and the slums. On the East a massive military base, Fort Bliss,&nbsp; spread into the desert as if the creosote made weapons.&nbsp; On the other side of the purple Franklin Mountains, to the west, between them and the river was another town of ranch houses, cotton fields, cane patches, big irrigation ditches, towering trees—cottonwoods and wild pecans, and occasional small workers' homes of adobe. Where the mountain caused the river to turn, in the middle, a smoke stack rose into the sky above mounds of black slag from the smelter. As if keeping guard it stood above a small bowl in the mountains with Bhutanese-style buildings that formed Texas Western University where my father worked.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">Unlike in Las Vegas, where the campus of New Mexico Highlands was only a couple of blocks away from our home in a stretch of row houses with Elm Trees and Lilacs, near the mounded bridge that crossed the Gallinas River, the entrance to Old Town, our house in the Upper Valley was miles distant from campus. It seemed impossible to walk. My father and his work seemed far removed and we began not to see him as much as before, nor know his colleagues, their families, and the students like we had in New Mexico.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">There, our home bounced with students most evenings. Someone would turn over a trash can to make an impromptu drum and students would dance and sing, my brother Daniel and I, two blond headed, fair skinned boys, weaving among them.&nbsp;In El Paso, students seldom came. There was just us in the ranch-style home my parents bought on a dirt road across from the country club’s hedges.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">I went to Zach White Elementary. It was a low slung mass of purple brick on the other side of the railroad tracks and across Doniphan drive, a two lane stretch of asphalt named after a Coronel in the US Army who commanded forces against the Mexican Army in the battle of El Brazito near El Paso. Doniphan prevailed and went on to capture El Paso and even take the regional capital, Chihuahua City.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">While the the street was named after the invading American Army that made El Paso part of the US and brought English as the now dominant if minority tongue, our school took its name from Zacharia Taliaferro White. He was a local grandee in the late nineteenth century. Born in Virginia he came west and made a fortune in Texas before settling in El Paso. He owned much of the land and grew cotton in the upper valley, the area from where the Rio Grande bends around Mount Franklin and becomes the Mexican Border. &nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">I quickly learned his name which sounded quaint and foreign, domesticated by the telling name White at the end. It rolled of the tongue. Still, I did not yet know Mr. White’s story nor that of Alexander Doniphan, though I did learn he did something to protect my parent’s people, the Mormons, in Missouri.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">To me they were just names. I was only seven and only knew this was not the four room Gallinas School I went to in Las Vegas. It was much larger and kept students through eighth grade. Each grade had multiple classes, A, B, C.&nbsp; I was in 3rd grade C, with Mrs. MacDonald as our teacher.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">At school she was Mrs. MacDonald and at church held in the Fairlyland Preschool across from her house and only a long cross-street-less stretch from Zach White, she was Sister MacDonald.&nbsp; She was my teacher in Sunday School too and made sure we knew that we Mormon boys and girls were different, though we did not really know what that meant.</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">She was stern, but somehow maternal, a mound of graying hair over a firm face and rounded belly. She kept us well disciplined and in place, both at church and at Zach White where our classroom was in a separate building from the main school, a stretch of first through third grades. She warned us that if we did not behave ourselves we would have to go to the principal’s office where the paddle, named Matilda, awaited us. &nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">Occasionally, one boy or another (they were always boys) had to make the walk of shame across the hot and dry dirt to the other building for their meeting with Matilda. It never happened to me, somehow.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">I understood Mrs. MacDonald’s English enough, though it sounded different. It reminded me of the Utah sounding speech of my parents and others at church and was different from the flatter and less nasal West Texas and New Mexico speech of El Paso.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">Nina was my guide, though she never new it, as I learned the ways of this big school, new city, and different set of languages.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">For some reason I cannot remember, three days a week I did have to cross that dust patch of shame. I had to go to speech therapy with kids from other classes who had issues with their speech.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">Somehow, I got the idea it was because I had a different accent than the other kids, or maybe it was just because I was shy and quiet. I do not know. I only know that three times a week, torn up with embarrassment, I stood up from my desk behind Nina and left the classroom when called.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">I and the others called went to a small room on the side of the main building where the therapist drilled us on proper pronunciation and such, “how now brown cow.” Then we returned to our classes, me wishing I were invisible.&nbsp; For some reason I shall never understand I was not good enough in speaking English, my parents’ native language, named after my mother’s mother’s homeland.</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">One period a day, Mrs. Salas Porras would work with us; the r’s of her last last name tightly rolled like a drum beat. She taught us Spanish.&nbsp; Almost all the kids got what she was saying. I did not.</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">It may have been because she taught in Spanish. Though I never before had classes in that language, it had been all around me in Las Vegas. That Spanish was gentle and it did not sound the same as the taught Northern Mexican standard Mrs. Salas Porras spoke.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">That may have been why I did not understand. Her accent, grammar, and speed of delivery was strange. Though I did not get a lot, it was attractive, as was she, a thin regal woman who wore beauty as something that belonged to her by right. She had dark hair, light skin and was powerful, like Nina. To me Nina seemed a younger version of Mrs. Salas Porras, though Nina was Anglo, I gathered, and not Mexican even if she and her family was from Chihuahua,&nbsp; Mexico. Not only did she and the Spanish teacher look similar, they also spoke the same.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">The other kids understood.&nbsp; Still, the Anglo kids spoke weird it seemed to me. They could not seem to pronounce the sharp and precise vowels and consonants of that tongue that we were told belonged to El Paso, since our city was founded by the Spanish before English got to Virginia. The city just did not belong to Mexico on the other side of the Rio Grande where the river’s name changed to Río Bravo.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">El Paso was the pass to the north, we were told, where Spanish conquerors marched through, metal helmets in place and lances in hand, to march up to Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico.&nbsp; We learned about pilgrims and George Washington, but there was always Coronado, the conquistador. The high school up North Mesa Street on the side of the mountain was named for him and kept him and the Spanish in our minds.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">We watched TV in English, played in English, went to the store in English, and had school mostly in English. Even church was in English—there was a Spanish congregation but they met at a different time. We did speak Spanish in Spanish class, on the play-ground, to talk to the women from Ciudad Juarez who lived in our homes and cared for us, as well as to the men who tended out yards, and when we went to Ciudad Juarez on weekends or other times to buy in the markets, eat in restaurants, get the car repaired, have a family portrait taken, and more.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">Spanish was the majority language of El Paso, but our neighborhood was more Anglo. Near the Country Club there were only a few small houses where Mexican families lived. Though US citizens, they were Mexican to us and I had classmates who came from those families and spoke Spanish, as well as English. &nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">Somehow there was a feeling that Anglo boys and girls needed to know Spanish but did not need to speak it as well as Mrs. Salas Porras. She had probably gotten a University degree in Mexico somewhere and read books in that language. We did not need to do that, it seemed. We only needed to know enough to get what we needed from the people who worked for our families or when we visited Mexico. &nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">Anglos and Mexicans seemed different people.&nbsp; One day, the school’s Janitor—a thin spigot of hard work, wiry like a knotted mesquite, Elías, was working on the other side of the school yard’s fence cleaning up trash the winds had blown in. My grade was in recess and the boys&nbsp; had gathered around a spinning piece of playground equipment. When the Anglo boys saw Elías working with his rake they all ran to the fence and started yelling “Chuy,” “Chuy,” “Chuy,” “Chuy,” “Chuy.”</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">Later I learned that was the common nickname for Jesús. But in the boys’ mouths it was an epithet, a slur. They were not Mexican and so could name Elias a Chuy. They mangled the meaning of the name and turned it into something foul. They drew a strong line there along the chainlink fence that separated Anglos from Mexicans.</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">Nina knew Spanish and English. She could speak and even more, she could write both. She had just come from Mexico and was Anglo. I wanted to know how to write it and speak it like she did.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">Mrs. Salas Porras would tell us stories in Spanish and have us write things down. Sometimes she gave lessons about grammar or maybe even conjugations. I understood some but not enough, and I did not know how to write. I had only learned to spell in English. &nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">Nina’s hand flowed with letters and words in Spanish. She did not have to hold back like the kids labeled Mexican. She did not try to show off, but the perfection of her pronunciation and her skill at writing since she went to school in Colonia Juarez, or maybe Dublán, made her stand out, elegant, exotic, and able.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">So I would not fail, I peeked over Nina’s shoulder most days to see what she was doing, how she formed in her notebook the words that Mrs. Salas Porras spoke. I too was Anglo, though my parents were from Utah, and not Mexico. I wanted to know. I wanted what she had.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(69, 69, 69); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: center;"></div><div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large; white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div><div><br /></div>David Knowltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12525999021776853508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391799044735518856.post-35507870831179520752016-04-21T23:31:00.000-06:002016-07-29T06:53:07.361-06:00Postlude in Two, Maybe a Dessert<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">David Knowlton</span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">To cook is to immerse yourself in sound.</span></span><span style="font-size: large;">There are the sounds of peeling, slicing, mincing, and chopping; those of bubbling, frying, and baking; blenders and mixers; microwaves and clocks.</span><span style="font-size: large;">T</span><span style="font-size: large;">hose sounds open paths that help us grasp much beyond food. &nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><br /></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br /><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Avenir Next'; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Do you know the sound of breaking open a crab’s legs to pull the hidden flesh out?&nbsp; It is a crack like no other. &nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Avenir Next'; line-height: normal; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Avenir Next'; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Have you ever broken open a bone, heard it splinter, in order to suck the marrow out from inside?&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br /><a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-size: large;">A commercial kitchen is a wall of sound, like flames rushing up and flattening around the base of a shaking wok, or even jumping inside to sear. Each cook makes their noise, from those who prep—snapping knives against boards, to those who do each task for the menu, the sound as complex as the fancy combinations of adjective rich ingredients and techniques we use to make dish names today.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">A home kitchen may be one strain of sound, one process at a time.&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Space is often small and timing and skill limited. Still, there are those whose kitchens burst in rhythm and melody, counter to one another, when every burner and the oven are used at the same time.</span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Sometimes it is monophony, a strand of melody and beat that stands alone, beautiful and strong. Other times it is polyphony, though never really a fugue with a melody that repeats in different pots and different pans while the others play a new one making a chase across the stove.&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Often it is polyrhythm, a mix of independent beats and sounds on top of one another creating a bigger and new pattern.&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Avenir Next'; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">What about a baquette only recently out of an oven, its top crisp and brown, almost burned?&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Avenir Next'; line-height: normal; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Avenir Next'; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">You can slice it with a serrated knife, listening as the edges tear at the crust—gnawing so sweetly—and it rips apart with a shhhurrh. Or you can tear it apart and listen to its crust break and the crumbs fall on your plate. Its snap and crunch turn divine in your mouth when&nbsp;</span></span><span style="font-size: large;">your teeth break it apart&nbsp;</span><span style="font-size: large;">right next to your inner ear.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Avenir Next'; line-height: normal; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Avenir Next'; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">The brown flavor of crust, well-cooked in the oven and dry, falling apart as your teeth grind is a language beyond words. Taste, sound, and feeling—texture combine.&nbsp; A polyphony emerges that is immediate and powerful.</span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">This has intrigued me for a long time, both in the kitchen and in</span></span><span style="font-size: large;">&nbsp;my work as a student of Andean society. Sometimes</span><span style="font-size: large;">&nbsp;trying to make many things simultaneously feels either like trying to play all those key boards and pedals on an organ while pulling stops or like playing all the instruments simultaneously in an orchestra. &nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">In the Andes, three, four, and often more bands will play very different music simultaneously during fiestas. You have to hear only your own to guide your steps and not let yourself get confused by others. Yet, in the polyrhythmic polyphony I see a metaphor of society as processes, people coming together, each with different melodies, different rhythms, and different meters. Out of it appears something greater, seldom euphonic and often dissonant though always compelling.</span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Avenir Next'; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">It is like the second measure of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor for organ.&nbsp; You know, right there at the half way point of the measure when that low D opens up. You should hear this note in a big hall with central pipes as tall as giant ponderosas and scaled tubes going down on either side.&nbsp; You should watch to see the doors open above and let the full sound from hidden pipes out.&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Avenir Next'; line-height: normal; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Avenir Next'; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">That low D resonates, as if an entire forest. Its overtones sound a chord, a triad, one note above the other, up into the sky. &nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Avenir Next'; line-height: normal; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Avenir Next'; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">And then, like rolling, chaotic thunder on the horizon or that crust breaking in a dissonant crunch on your teeth, Bach throws in a note that makes the rest crumble in dissonance. The crust breaks and breaks in your mouth, before it all comes together in the peace of a D major chord, the fluffy white middle that spreads through your mouth and soothes.&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Besides an unspoken metaphor for society, it makes me wonder about food. In Utah, we prefer things in balance and harmony. Monophony suits us on the table and in our society where we set traffic laws to channel and maintain singular order. Even for potlucks, potentially chaotic polyphonous dinners, people here try to establish a logical coherence built around a plan, a monotonic singularity.</span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">The favorite meal of people in Cusco, indeed their festive dish is an assemblage of different ingredients served like a mountain. Each is distinct and not unified. Together in their multiplicity, in the form of a mountain, though, they speak aesthetically of polyphony, of people coming together in, and making a synthesis through, being for each other, though different. They are kind of like the mycelium of fungi and the roots of pines intertwined and feeding each other. &nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Avenir Next'; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">It is even like a musical bow, taut with a string that flings arrows at elands and giraffes and sings each time the arrows release. Sometimes the San place its end against their mouth and strike it making song, a play of notes in sequence vibrating body and air and speaking back to the wind and rain.</span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">The sounds of cooking--spoon stirring the bottom of a pot, or even afterwards, dishes and pots rinsed in running water, or those of chopsticks or silverware on a plate as food is separated and lifted--are primary and yet show us so much about life and its (dis)order. Sound is never completely alone, never completely gone, and never completely harmonious.&nbsp;</span></span></div><br /><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>David Knowltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12525999021776853508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391799044735518856.post-9237125791176370702016-04-06T07:47:00.004-06:002016-04-06T22:29:26.865-06:00Me-Food-Eat, A Story of Storm and Burn<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">David Knowlton</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">To eat.&nbsp; Such a simple proposition—without eating there is no life.&nbsp; Yet, so complex.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">Canoeing among stones and rapids while you know somewhere ahead there is a cliff.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">If only it were me, food, eat.&nbsp; Such a troubled sequence, but the middle, food, that is the flow among boulders and quick descents.&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><a name='more'></a></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">The moving van arrived first.&nbsp; We got out of the car and went in, after days driving from Georgia to New Mexico. The table was set in the kitchen, just like it always was, chairs around it.&nbsp; Nothing to cook, though, and nothing to eat.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">Dad, came in the back door, packages in hand and set them on the table.&nbsp; After a quick prayer, thanks for getting us here safely.&nbsp; Thanks for new home and job.&nbsp; Thanks for food.&nbsp; Bless…</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">It was different. It smelled like nothing I had known before. It was red and white and soft.&nbsp; Food from a new state, a new town where plains jumble into mountains. Staghorns stipple the day, Me, three years old.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">First bite. “Daddy, I’m burnin’ on the inside and burnin’ on the outside”&nbsp; Race to faucet.&nbsp; Water, water.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">New home, new food, chile, yes with “e”.&nbsp; I learned that not long after I learned not to pump down water whenever it appeared. Didn’t I say food was stormy.&nbsp; Sometimes it is chilli but in New Mexico, they said, it was always chile. In South American Spanish it is ají, and in the Quechua that I now often listen to, it is uchu. &nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">Me, 19.&nbsp; Sitting at a table in Bolivia. A magenta blooming, years-old geranium standing tall in the window with blue curtains. Place mats in front of us along with a plate of sliced crusty bread and a small pot of ají blended with tomato called llajwa. We waited for the soup.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">Lunch always started with soup and some days we waited for it to be fully heated. That was hard after a morning of walking all over trying to talk with people. &nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">Though they meant the bread to be eaten with soup and the llajwa to season the soup, I lifted a slice, spread a spoon-full of llajwa on it and ate. The tingle was strong, throughout my mouth. It made me happy.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">I did not think, just went somewhere away from homesickness, away from hunger, away from frustration, tired legs, and insecurity. &nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">“Why do you do that?&nbsp; Put llajwa on your bread?&nbsp; It is not good for you. They should not eat so much of it here.” &nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">“It’s just like jam, only better!”</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">Mom had an ulcer. Dad and the doctors worried, though they said nothing.&nbsp; You could tell.&nbsp; They made her stop eating so many good things. &nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">“Chile is good for an ulcer.&nbsp; It stings but it will heal it.”&nbsp; She liked green chile.&nbsp; We liked green chile.&nbsp; Even if we now lived in Texas, we ate New Mexico. &nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">The ulcer went away, but she was ill again and I was far away, in another country, on another continent, though the people here say it is the same, just América.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">“Don’t eat ají.&nbsp; It is bad for you.&nbsp; It stimulates and burns your digestive system.&nbsp; You will have gastritis.“&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">“Eat it. It is high in vitamin C and helps with digestion.” I ate, an act of faith and memory, a sacrament, a spice.&nbsp; Food.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">Peppers, hot and sweet, began in the Amazon, many near where I was in Oruro. That is what the researchers say, because where the jungle piles up on mountains you find the greatest variety of wild peppers. Anywhere.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">The Spanish ate them first in the Caribbean, maybe on Santo Domingo.&nbsp; Maybe it was Columbus.&nbsp; Maybe he had to drink. &nbsp;(Water?&nbsp; Wine?&nbsp; Beer?&nbsp; What?) &nbsp;I don’t know, but he called them peppers (pimientos) and also ají, like the people there did since pepper already referred to another seasoning. &nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">In Mexico, the Aztecs called them chilli and the Spanish there said chile, like us. They brought them to us in New Mexico. Coronado did, though the Indians may well have grown them with their squash and beans before.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">To us, that bite was Spanish. We, though Anglo and from elsewhere, became Spanish when we ate. When we left, we stayed Spanish, New Mexico Spanish, at least in eating chile.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">“The capsaicin in hot peppers slows down the growth of bacteria in food. That is why they are so widespread. You find them all over the world.”</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">“People who eat spicy food live longer. Capsaicin promotes longevity.”&nbsp; “Capsaicin helps with chronic pain.”</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">“Capsaicin reduces tumor growth.”</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">So many claims. So much controversy. I looked. I found the top recent articles and read, science and jargon aside. So little known. Proof so slim. Still, evidence. Hum . . .</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">Me, food, eat.&nbsp; Is there a me without the other two?&nbsp; Yet food roils. There is no calm place nor safe food to eat. No peace.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">Red. Tortillas soaked in red and piled on the plate. Cheese and onions inside and on top.&nbsp; Shredded lettuce on the edges. It burns. Makes the eyes tear.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">After eating, when burn settles, the mouth feels clean, refreshed. The body energized.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">Good chile burns the next day too, they say, on the other end.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;">&nbsp; &nbsp;</div><br /><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><br /></div>David Knowltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12525999021776853508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391799044735518856.post-70463174565438766372016-03-03T12:55:00.000-07:002016-03-04T09:25:17.448-07:00Taco Wars and Erasing the Barrio<div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">David Knowlton</span></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Two fetishes of origin excite the food world more than they should: who and where. They ignite wars of thinly repressed erotic power as someone or somewhere claims a given food.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The questions seem historical but answers must prop up the preening ego and erotic thrust of the one making the claim. We could paraphrase Walter Benjamin, the past appears mid stroke and creates a paroxysm of self-love. &nbsp;</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Such a war burns between the press of Central Texas’ sister cities. Like webcamers they preen and parade to make both San Antonio and Austin claim to be the home of breakfast tacos.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span><br /><a name='more'></a></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Their spitting and sparing even drew Gustavo Arrellano all the way from the Pacific Coast. Though he can bluster in prose fit for a luchador, he calls out Texas bombast while he looks for data.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Arellano challenges Matthew Sedacca and Austin restauranteur Diana Vasquez-Valera’s claim that if not the taco, the concept of “breakfast tacos” was born in Austin in the 80’s.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Arellano turns to the archives, the newspaper and magazine ones, to look for the phrase “breakfast taco”.” History by clippings is a dangerous business,” he proclaims, yet he charts his evidence for why he feels Austin cannot claim to be where the phrase originated. A spattering of sources outside Austin had already published the phrase before the 80s and it doesn’t turn up for the Texas Capital City until 1986 in an article in <i>Texas Monthly</i>.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Of course, none of this means there weren’t breakfast tacos in Austin before then, just that they didn’t have a press agent even if hordes lined up to eat them at cafes and stands every morning and masses more made them at home.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I was one of both camps while at the University of Texas from 1978-1988. I don’t remember the phrase from the beginning of this period though I do from well before the <i>Texas Monthly </i>article.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Phrase be damned! From my first days walking down Guadlaupe, and crossing to or from campus, I frequented vendors at metal carts who sold egg and potato tacos.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Mornings, I often went to other taco stands and cafes throughout the city to order egg and chorizo tacos. These were not burritos, rolled and tucked. They were tacos, folded over. They were not restaurant fare; they were far too simple for that. Just down-barrio common sense.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Yet, Austin’s Barrio risks erasure in the preening of restauranteurs and posing of Anglo press who think they and theirs are the ones that matter.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Sedacca writes about breakfast tacos: “the largely Anglo population in Austin having an appetite for this Mexican-inspired dish wasn’t a strong likelihood in the ’80s.”&nbsp;</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Despite what Sedacca writes, we Anglos of Austin were scarfing up Mexican food then, whether the enchilada combo, chicken lime soup, or tamales. We made nachos, not in a pile but one chip at a time. We had migas in the Student Union cafeteria. We ate fajitas on campus at Chicano student fundraisers before they were made of sirloin. We consumed tacos, even for breakfast.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This was not new. Already a century before, Austin’s Gabachos ate food from the Barrio. Tex-Mex, even without the label, was already there. Here is the issue: the many historical cross-overs of Barrio food into Anglo Austin while dismissing the Barrio</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Just a little research will support this issue and show its complexity. Let us look at much mentioned restauranteur Diane Vasquez-Valera. Her heritage goes to Moses Vasquez, born in Austin in 1923 — his wife Carmen Villasana and he opened Austin’s first Tamale House in 1959*— and to Carmen’s father Antonio Villasana who settled in Austin after fleeing Mexico, in 1912.&nbsp; “In the 20s” he opened “a small restaurant called Tony’s Café near what is now Austin City Hall.” Villasana also pioneered a tortilla factory in Austin in 1935.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Austin’s Anglo establishment already ate food prepared by Barrio entrepreneurs though styles and particular foods came and went. “‘Breakfast tacos began when they were sold to the public, and they became—not an overnight sensation, but a novelty, a delicioso concept,’” said Vasquez-Valera. She means when they were marketed and then became a named thing.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“The elder stateswoman of Austin’s breakfast taco scene said that her family initially didn’t think there was much hope for commercial success with the breakfast tacos [. . .]” (Sedacca)&nbsp;</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Though Vasquez-Valera forgets how much we Güeros were already eating her family’s and other’s breakfast tacos by the 80’s her memory of a barrier and changing trends speaks truth.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In 1893 Mexican vendors sold on Austin’s courthouse square (Cohen, Rayo, and Neece). Old Mexican Town, Austin’s Barrio, was then downtown, around Guadalupe and Fifth Streets, but the 1928 city plan relegated its people to the city’s east side. Segregation ensued, although Mexican restaurants run by people from the Barrio became increasingly popular. Popular (read Anglo) appeal of the food and segregation of its cooks went folded like a taco.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Vasquez-Valera’s brother, Robert remembered growing up in the forties. “You wanna know what it was like as a kid eating tacos? If I took tacos to school, everyone would say shame on you. There was a lot of shame eating a taco back then. You had to hide them. You couldn’t eat them in front of nobody.” (Anderson)</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Some food crossed the line of public and of Anglo acceptability in some moments and other food did not. That shifting unequal line — call it appropriation if you want — is the story of Tex Mex. &nbsp;</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Arellano’s initial and parting shots may be the most incisive in this taco war. He looks over his shoulder to Mexico’s purists to say “we're talking about "breakfast tacos" as a quantifiable meal, not tacos for breakfast, which has happened in Mexico since time immemorial” while he ends with “San Antonio never had to brag about its breakfast taco love—folks there just call it "breakfast."&nbsp;</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Yup, and Yup. &nbsp;</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Tacos were just breakfast in Austin too, me consta. Marketers’ and journalists’ slime-fests don’t press a tortilla or fold a taco worth a damn.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Note:</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><ul><li style="line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: normal;"></span>In my quick look online for sources I found 1959 as the most common date for founding this Austin tradition. While this date is given on page 24 of <i>Austin Breakfast Tacos: The Story of the Most Important Taco of the Day,</i> on page 156 the same book claims it opened in 1961. Research needed.&nbsp;</span></li></ul><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">References:&nbsp;</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Addie Broyles, “Tamale House owner Robert 'Bobby' Vasquez dies”, <a href="http://www.austin360.com/weblogs/the-feed/2014/apr/28/tamale-house-owner-bobby-vasquez-dies/" target="_blank"><i>Austin 360</i>, (April 28, 2014</a>), &nbsp;</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">L.V. Anderson, Oral History of Breakfast Tacos Recalls an Era When Tacos Were Shameful <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/08/12/oral_history_of_breakfast_tacos_texas_monthly_s_interviews_with_austin_tamale.html" target="_blank"><i>Slate </i>(August 12, 2013)</a>&nbsp;</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Andrew Weber, “A Brief History of Austinites ‘Discovering’ Mexican Food”, <a href="http://kut.org/post/brief-history-austinites-discovering-mexican-food" target="_blank"><i>KUT.org</i><i>,</i> (February 24, 2016)&nbsp;</a></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Gustavo Arellano Who Invented Breakfast Tacos? Not Austin—And People Should STFU About It,<a href="http://www.ocweekly.com/restaurants/who-invented-breakfast-tacos-not-austin-and-people-should-stfu-about-it-6992058" target="_blank"> <i>OC Weekly </i>(February 23, 2016)</a>&nbsp;</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Jarod Neece and Mando Rayo, <i>Austin Breakfast Tacos: The Story of the Most Important Taco of the Day </i>(The History Press, July 9, 2014)</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Jason Cohen, Mando Rayo, and Jarod Neece, “The Most Important Taco of the Day”,&nbsp;</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">John T. Edge, “Tacos in the Morning? That’s the Routine in Austin”, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/dining/10united.html?_r=0" target="_blank"><i>The New York Times, </i>(March 9, 2010)</a>&nbsp;</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Mathew Sedacca, “How Austin Became the Home of the Crucial Breakfast Taco: The history of the city’s beloved morning dish”, <a href="http://austin.eater.com/2016/2/19/11060078/breakfast-taco-austin-history" target="_blank"><i>Austin Eater</i>, February 19, 2016.</a></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Rachel Feit, “Tamales or Not, It's a Family Affair: Robert Vasquez's breakfast taco empire expands”, <a href="http://www.austinchronicle.com/food/2012-05-18/tamales-or-not-its-a-family-affair/" target="_blank"><i>The Austin Chronicle</i>, (May 18, 2012)&nbsp;</a></span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/statesman/obituary.aspx?pid=172114740" target="_blank">“Moses Steve Vasquez, Obituary”</a></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://tx.findacase.com/research/wfrmDocViewer.aspx/xq/fac.19930325_0040485.TX.htm/qx" target="_blank">“TONY'S TORTILLA FACTORY v. FIRST BANK AND SAM J. BROWN (03/25/93)” COURT OF APPEALS OF TEXAS, FIRST DISTRICT, HOUSTON (March 25, 1993)</a>.</span></div>David Knowltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12525999021776853508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391799044735518856.post-39657726509357634232016-02-16T08:07:00.000-07:002016-02-16T08:08:30.790-07:00A Tlayuda Is Not a Pizza, Oaxacan Cuisine in Salt Lake<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">“Mexican pizza,” <a href="http://www.sltrib.com/entertainment/3468511-155/restaurant-review-oaxacan-food-joins-salvadoran" target="_blank">she scribed</a>.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">Pizza Hut in Mexico City danced before me. I dreamed them putting pickled jalapeños or even al pastor meat on a pie. Maybe she meant spreading the enchilada sauce on the bread before adding cheese, veggies, and meats.&nbsp;</span></div><a name='more'></a><br /><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">No. My thoughts were wrong.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">She was not talking about anything in Mexico. She was trying to make sense for Anglo Utah readers of a dish from Oaxaca called a tlayuda that is once again offered in Salt Lake. She is Heather King and she writes about food and other things for the Salt Lake Tribune, the state’s flagship newspaper.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-917ApoBC6i0/VsM3JFKABQI/AAAAAAAAElo/lpy1RsYxZHM/s1600/FullSizeRender%2B25.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-917ApoBC6i0/VsM3JFKABQI/AAAAAAAAElo/lpy1RsYxZHM/s640/FullSizeRender%2B25.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tlayuda from La Oaxaqueña</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br /><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">King reviewed an old ethnic restaurant that has new offerings in Salt Lake when she found herself stumped for a comparison and inadvertently suggested Pizza Hut in Mexico. They do have pizzas in Mexico and not just at Pizza Hut, though that is not what she meant.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">For years, Guanaco—a name that simply translates as someone from El Salvador—has been a tiny place on the corner of 500 East and 2700 South in South Salt Lake.&nbsp;As befitting its name, it offered pupusas and other Salvadoran offerings while more and more people besides those from the Central American Nation have come to love this stuffed, corn meal patty. &nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">As has happened before in Salt Lake Valley with Salvadoran food, someone from another country bought the restaurant and made changes. In this case the new owners are from Oaxaca, a rich and complex state in southern Mexico famous for its food and about which Diana Kennedy published a whole book. This family maintains the Café Guanaco, but around the corner, and to its side, on 27th South they opened La Oaxaqueña, a small store and Cafe.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">There, they serve up classic Oaxacan moles, that unique Mexican combination of different chiles, fruits, and spices. By now, most Anglos have at least heard of mole and maybe even tried some, especially the version from Puebla called simply mole poblano. People go “Oh, you mean that sauce with chocolate.”</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">Well Moles are far more complex than that and have widely varied lists of ingredients. Oaxaca, in particular is famous for its moles, which are not the same as the one from Puebla.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-o-9t4DyKYNk/VsM3JO0rkjI/AAAAAAAAElk/BkBjhrNXDkk/s1600/FullSizeRender%2B24.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-o-9t4DyKYNk/VsM3JO0rkjI/AAAAAAAAElk/BkBjhrNXDkk/s640/FullSizeRender%2B24.jpg" width="480" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Enmoladas ad La Oaxaqueña</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"></span></div><br /><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">I tried the enmoladas, at La Oaxaqueña. These are shredded chicken rolled in a softened corn tortilla and covered with rich, complex, flavorful mole. It was dark, fruity, and spicy; it hinted at a whole array of peppers as well as spices. Frankly, this was one of the best moles I have had in Salt Lake Valley.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">But back to the pizza. My friend ordered one, a tlayuda. It is a large, plate-sized, crispy corn tortilla on which a slurry of ground black beans was first slathered, followed by different meats, cheese, and a topping of chopped cabbage and Mexican cream.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">It was wonderful. Each bite provided a combination of diverse flavors, from the crunchy, toasted corn flavor of the tortilla base, to the earthy and well seasoned black beans, the creaminess and texture of Oaxaca Cheese, the meats with their different textures and flavors, the freshness of the topping, and the light sourness of Mexican cream. Diverse, clean, and brilliant.&nbsp; On top, if you wished, you could place their stinging and light hot sauce.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">The only thing the tlayuda shared with a pizza was that it was large and the base had toppings. Other than that, it is not at all like a pizza.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">I would have compared it more to something we used to get once a week in the school cafeteria in El Paso, tapatías, more commonly known as chalupas or tostadas, a fried corn tortilla with refried beans, meat, cheese, and then chopped lettuce and tomatoes along with salsa.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">Surely, everyone has had one of these, whether from Taco Bell, a more Mexican restaurant, or at home. They are almost as mainstream Anglo fare as tacos and enchiladas have become.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">It can be difficult to write about foods unfamiliar to your audience, at least the readers you presume you have. You struggle to find comparisons that open doors while not closing too many.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">In this case, though she is far from alone in using the comparison, Heather King may have closed too many doors instead of opening them.&nbsp; She simultaneously estranged Mexican food and obfuscated what a tlayuda is.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">She estranged in that she ignored all the knowledge that Anglo Americans have of what is now, perhaps, the most popular ethnic food in the US. Her writing disappeared the context of a tlayuda by hiding the tostada, and all the other types of tortillas with toppings, such as sopes or huaraches to name just two others.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">She obfuscated because unlike a pizza where they idea is to obtain a harmony of textures and flavors, in the balance between sauce, cheese, and meats, the tlayuda prefers flavors that are clearly distinct and clean. It is not the muddling of ingredients that comes in each bite, but the combination, the layers, of distinct flavors that play tag in your mouth.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ConN4aItwMA/VsM3Iez-m9I/AAAAAAAAEls/YrhYnn1lgCs/s1600/FullSizeRender%2B23.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="476" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ConN4aItwMA/VsM3Iez-m9I/AAAAAAAAEls/YrhYnn1lgCs/s640/FullSizeRender%2B23.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Molotes at La Oaxaqueña</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">La Oaxaqueña is wonderful and a great, if humble, addition to Salt Lake’s food scene. I am going to back to the store which every two weeks, on Friday, receives a shipment of foods from Oaxaca, since I want some of those amazing chiles Oaxaca has that are found no where else.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">I will also be back frequently to try its other foods, such as molotes (fried puffs of corn stuffed with potatoes and home-made chorizo) and each of the different moles.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">I will order more tlayudas too.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">But, a tlayuda is not a pizza, Heather, Mexican or otherwise. Leave that to Pizza Hut, Mexico City, or to that grand city’s version of the Vera Pizza Napoletana.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;">The tlayuda fits in a whole tradition of corn tortillas with toppings that goes from Utah all the way into Central America. I am happy we have so many of them, now, in Salt Lake Valley. And, I am happy Oaxaqueña has come bringing us outstanding moles, tlayudas, and more.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><br /><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><br /></div>David Knowltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12525999021776853508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391799044735518856.post-5398757963972708172016-02-10T08:04:00.002-07:002016-02-10T14:59:35.185-07:00Bubble, Turn, Soak: Carnival and Cosmos in Cusco<div style="font-family: helvetica; line-height: normal;">David Knowlton</div><div style="font-family: helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: helvetica; line-height: normal;">Couples dance around <a href="http://www.cuzcoeats.com/2016/02/dance-food-and-color-carnival-2016-in-cusco/">trees covered with gifts</a> and planted for the occasion in Cusco’s neighborhoods these days. The pairs turn and spin and they chop with an axe.&nbsp; Turn, turn, chop. Turn, turn, chop. A band, contracted for the occasion plays and a beat marks the way. Turn, turn, chop.</div><div style="font-family: helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: helvetica; line-height: normal;">After a long time the tree falls, creaking and moaning. The couple striking the last blow gets a new task, one filled with responsibility and obligations. They sponsor next year's feast. They find and organize to put up the tree. They coordinate the people of the neighborhood who bring drink and ingredients for a meal boiled in a single, very large pot.&nbsp; It is a feast in a pot and on many plates.<br /><a name='more'></a></div><div style="font-family: helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: helvetica; line-height: normal;">The meal has <a href="http://www.cuzcoeats.com/2011/03/food-fell-earth-carnivals-stew-thimpu/">two names</a>; it is a couple dancing: turn,turn, chop. It is both <a href="http://www.cuzcoeats.com/2016/01/carnivals-of-abundance-puchero/"><i>puchero</i> and <i>thimpu</i></a>, the one Spanish and the other Quechua. Both refer to boiling, especially foods boiling together in a pot of water.</div><div style="font-family: helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: helvetica; line-height: normal;">I<a href="http://www.cuzcoeats.com/2016/02/carnival-reigns-in-cusco-as-water-bursts-everywhere/">t rains these days</a>. Water falls from the sky and when it does, the streets fill like the pot, splash, splash, fall. Youths, un-married, un-coupled go around together, boys with boys, and girls with girls. <a href="http://www.cuzcoeats.com/2016/02/it-is-carnival-and-time-to-play/">They throw buckets of water</a>, or colored water balloons at the other. They spray them with <i>chisquetes </i>which means<i> </i>squirts, guns made to squirt out water. The one side squirts, the other squirts back, and both laugh. &nbsp;</div><div style="font-family: helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: helvetica; line-height: normal;">Squirt, squirt, laugh, while married couples turn, turn, chop. They all boil like water in the pot or like a wind through leaves as the squall comes in. Bubble, bubble cook.</div><div style="font-family: helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: helvetica; line-height: normal;">Into the pot go meats. You get beef loin and mutton ribs, as well as dried flesh. &nbsp;It is a composite of two or three different animals—cows, sheep, and maybe llamas or alpacas—as if one, the first two fresh and still red, the other salted, dried, and white. Into the pot they go, like couples, woman from one family and man from another, turn, turn, chopping together in the rain. &nbsp;</div><div style="font-family: helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: helvetica; line-height: normal;">You get foods from under ground, yellow potatoes, orange carrots, and pale yucas, along with freeze dried and white <i>moraya</i> (special bitter potatoes soaked in running streams to take out the bitter and dark before being frozen and dried).&nbsp;</div><div style="font-family: helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: helvetica; line-height: normal;">You get foods from above ground, white ears of sweet corn, yellow garbanzos, and green heads of cabbage, leaves rounded together. From up in the air, hanging from trees, you get fruit, yellow peaches and white pears, sweet to go with savory.&nbsp;</div><div style="font-family: helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: helvetica; line-height: normal;">All together, a cosmos united, they boil, boil, cook. Water dances in the pot, youths laugh and squirt, couples turn, turn, and chop, and the band plays, plays, and plays.&nbsp;</div><div style="font-family: helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: helvetica; line-height: normal;"><a href="http://www.cuzcoeats.com/2016/02/strawberries-and-chicha-thrill-one-and-all-at-carnival/"><i>Chicha</i> is served</a>, yellow fermented juice of corn. <a href="http://www.cuzcoeats.com/2016/02/strawberries-and-chicha-thrill-one-and-all-at-carnival/"><i>Frutillada</i> is served</a>, red from strawberries blended in <i>chicha</i>. They effervesce like the breeze, like the water in the pot, bubble, bubble and cook, or the couples when they dance some more, turn, turn, chop.</div><div style="font-family: helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: helvetica; line-height: normal;">Strangers appear, look, look, snap. Give them food, give them drink, turn, turn, chop. Wet them. Cover them with color, laugh, laugh, play.</div><div style="font-family: helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: helvetica; line-height: normal;">The tree will fall, children laugh and rush for its gifts, run, run, grab. A whole world will be dished up. First comes broth. Then a plate with tubers and meats on the bottom, corn and fruit by their side, rice and garbanzos on top. All covered with a cabbage leaf, a composite, well-dressed food like an ear still in its husk. A bowl of ground hot sauce waits on the side to spice the food.&nbsp;</div><div style="font-family: helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: helvetica; line-height: normal;">First the tree falls and people eat. Then Christ dies, and people eat. From neighborhood to “nations”, they dance up to the mountain’s top to welcome a new sun, new son.The Lord of Temblors comes out from the Church and Maria Angola tolls: boom, boom, boom. Red flowers splash and people go home and eat, six savory dishes and six sweet.&nbsp;</div><div style="font-family: helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: helvetica; line-height: normal;">No trickery here, no inside out. Carnival turns to Lent, then Easter. Corn grows high and lush, then it dries, bright colors all around. &nbsp;</div><div style="font-family: helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: helvetica; line-height: normal;">Rain falls, then sun shines, seemingly without pity, and people dance, dance, and eat. New trees sprout and rise in sun, rain, and breeze. They turn, turn, grow.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div>David Knowltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12525999021776853508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391799044735518856.post-74218679724080458162016-01-22T06:53:00.003-07:002016-02-10T22:15:32.416-07:00Contacts and Layers, Dinner at Cancun Cafe<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: right;"><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; margin-left: 36px; text-indent: -36px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; margin-left: 36px; text-indent: -36px;"><br /></div></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: right;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"></span><br /><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; margin-left: 36px; text-indent: -36px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;helvetica&quot;; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal;">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">&nbsp; “Autoethnography, transculturation, critique, collaboration, bilingualism, mediation, parody, denunciation, imaginary dialogue, vernacular expression -- these are some of the literate arts of the contact zone. Miscomprehension, incomprehension, dead letters, unread masterpieces, absolute heterogeneity of meaning -- these are some of the perils of writing in the contact zone.”</span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="text-align: right;">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; —Mary Louise Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone”</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Uxmal, I have never visited you. I have not seen first hand your stone pyramids and palaces, nor have I heard near you the whoosh of Yucatecan nor smelled the spicy depths of achiote, a seed that seasons the food of your people. It not only imparts flavor to the meals people eat near you, known also as annatto or bixa it once colored people to make them attractive, to make them social.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Though you stand stolidly in Yucatan a monument to a once and maybe, your name escaped and I found it on a gray, smoggy, Salt Lake January in a brick building, near the city’s center, with federalist doors and windows. You were in a place called Cancun, as if the resort on the opposite side of Yucatan where blue waters and gleaming, tall hotels meet, where pyramids from Chichen Itza, not you, stand out on the wall.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><br /><a name='more'></a></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">The day was cold and dirty snow still made piles from earlier storms when my friend and I pulled open the door and walked into the cafe’s perfumed warmth, where you, confusing you, sometimes pronounced Ucs-mal and sometimes Ush-mal, were on the menu.You confused me more when I read you were a plate of cheese enchiladas in red sauce, accompanied by rice and beans.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">How, Uxmal, did you become a label for a food from my land, that long contested, militarized strip where two imaginations beat against a growing wall and where cheese and chile come together? You are a world away from that line where cowboys and vaqueros separate.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">The one in English tamed the West while the other in Spanish civilized the north.The one had cattle drives to railroad towns and made beef the American fare; We would not have hamburgers without it. The other, with Spanish-speaking dons, made a world of beef perched between north and south. Not only was this strip a place of steak whether English of Spanish was spoken, it was a world of flour tortillas, chile and cheese on both sides.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Your world, Uxmal has cenotes going deep into the earth and pyramids rising skyward. A place of pibs, ovens in the ground, and sapotes growing on trees. You had mathematicians who invented the zero and astronomers who plumbed the night skies.The Spanish brought sour oranges to you. They mix with your achiote in rich concoctions. Their complexity is like a night of galaxy on top of galaxy splashing in light across the sky, so different from the straight-forward and relatively plain sauces of that border strip where chile and maybe oregano and garlic stand alone, no folding or layering of flavors allowed.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">My friend went traditional and did not order a place-made-directly food. His was indirect. He asked the waiter from Yucatan, named Russell, for cochinita pibil, a slow baked pork marinated in sour orange and achiote and cooked in banana leaves. Originally it was cooked in those pibs in a technique as old, perhaps, as the first people to wander down to Yucatan.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">I could not resist the confusion of my Tex Mex border with a city in Yucatan and not knowing how to say the name. I know in Mayan the x is sh, just as Mexico once was Meshico in pronunciation. I have been corrected before when I said the -sh- and was told it’s -cs-. Russell said it as Ushmal.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Uxmal arrived, yellow cheese—made yellow with achiote dye—and a chile gravy with hints of cinnamon, and not the straight-up red chile of my home side by side with red rice and refried beans, the classic combination of the north that really does not go too far south.When I was a boy, enchiladas used only white cheese, a Monterrey Jack of the border, but now yellow cheese increasingly dominates. Though more gringo than not, still the yellow cheese has achiote, the only thing other than the name Uxmal, tying it to the cochinita pibil my friend had.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">His dish was deliciously complex, sour citrus notes against a pulsing base of achiote in a broth of very slowly cooked pork. It was complemented by red onions sliced and marinated in sour orange, so different from the two-note shuffle of my Uxmal.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">As we paid the bill, Russell asked me in Spanish, a language of my youth and my adulthood, where I was from. “El Paso”, I said.&nbsp; “But you do not have a Tejano accent,” he responded as x went from sh to a throaty h without ever passing through -cs-. “I used to,” I said, just like white cheese used to fill enchiladas and Salt Lakers thought the sauce should be mostly tomato. “I have spent a lot of time in South America over many decades. My accent has changed. Their’s is sticky.”&nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">I wanted to ask how he was named “Russell” when he was from Mérida, but held back. Russell, un-questioned, was good enough.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">My friend and I said good bye to Russell. We trudged out the door to where breath takes form and becomes visible when leaving your mouth and Cancun stayed inside. &nbsp;</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Reference:</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif;">Mary Louise Pratt, "Arts of the Contact Zone” [From Ways of Reading, 5th edition, ed. David Bartholomae and Anthony Petroksky (New York Bedford / St. Martin's, 1999)]&nbsp; <a href="http://www2.fiu.edu/~ereserve/010035191-1.pdf">http://www2.fiu.edu/~ereserve/010035191-1.pdf</a> (accessed January 22, 2016)</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;"><br /></div><br /><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;">&nbsp;&nbsp;</div>David Knowltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12525999021776853508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391799044735518856.post-14422930923392830432013-12-15T10:44:00.002-07:002016-02-11T14:56:22.732-07:00Desert Sun<div class="p1"><span class="s1">Fourth Grade, the old Zach White School, Upper Valley, El Paso, Texas.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">Bored and not happy, this tall and thin eight year old, turning nine, did not know what to do or how to do. &nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">The school work was easy.&nbsp; It seldom grabbed my attention. P.E. or any period of recreation terrified. I did not fit. At least in class the terror subsided and I could lose myself in some book, all the while listening to the teacher, a very intense dark-haired man, Mr. Jacobs, who was thin as a Texas dawn.&nbsp;</span><br /><a name='more'></a></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">Outside, the high Chihuahuan desert sprang up, not far from the school’s walls, in mounds of creosote and ocotillo. The eastern mountains were baked into purple walls. The sun relentlessly pounded down. Shadow was scarce.</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">Though my hair was white-blond and did not absorb much heat, and my skin tawny from &nbsp; walking between home and school down Love Road, with its sticky asphalt and burning dirt sides, I loved shadows.&nbsp; They diminished the sun and let me be alone, away from taunts and threats, and sometimes fists.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">Cotton grew six feet tall in fields to the side of Love, near the train tracks by Doniphan Rd. where the school’s rigid, purple brick walls rose. My father said it was named for someone who protected the Saints in Missouri. But those Saints who were supposed to be just like me, since the teachers included all of us in the term “Mormon Boys”, were the most unrelenting in their torment. Only shadows or Mr. Jacobs' eyes kept them still.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">In the cotton I could feel safe, as I watched quail with their questioning top knot race among the stems. It was a different world, one I imagined was a jungle filled with something so different from where I was, a place I could simply be.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">The cane, though tight and able to slice your arms and legs if you were unwary also formed secret paths and openings where the sun did not beat and there were no fists.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">In winter giant tumbleweeds blew in the frequent winds that picked up grit and stung eyes and face. They caught in the irrigation canals and against fences and walls. In them or under them I would think or read. &nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">Those days when Mr. Jacobs would stand in front of us or stride up and down the aisles among our wooden desks, it seemed the temperature would drop and sunlight decrease. &nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">In my father’s library, I found picture books of the Amazon. With its tall trees and relentless green, it was so different than the place in which I was growing up. The rivers were so much bigger than the Rio Grande which marked boundaries between us and New Mexico to the west, and then us and Mexico to the South.&nbsp; They were even bigger than the Mississippi I remembered crossing when we left the coastal South in which I was born.</span><br /><span class="s1"><br /></span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">The Portuguese of the Amazon with its strange spellings and exotic sounds was almost always intelligible, but yet so different from either of the two languages of my world, Spanish and English. &nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">While Mr. Jacobs would pace the class, or stand and talk, I would open one or another book of the jungle and study photos, or read. When I did not have the books I would dream.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">The jungle was filled with shade.&nbsp; Its canopy blocked the sun’s entrance, like a giant version of my cotton fields.&nbsp; I dreamed, day after day, of living there when grown up. &nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">I would leave behind the desert with its whip lash scorpions, rattle snakes, tortures, and cactus with spines. I would escape its summer thunder storms that made every arroyo dangerous and sometimes filled El Paso’s streets with water deeper than a car was tall.&nbsp; Once it even lapped right against the door of my home, another place where I could find shadows. &nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">I would leave behind those Mormon boys whose tongues where sharper than the switch blades offered in every Juarez market, and whose fists snapped like the bull whips we would bring across the river and home. &nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">There was beauty, green and lots of flowers, and different kinds of people, including Indians.&nbsp; They were not like the Tewa or Navajo and Apache Indians I knew when younger.&nbsp; They were more like the Tarahumara who came to the border in strange clothes and spoke an unintelligible tongue. These, though, wore few clothes.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">In that desert sun I did not like to wear clothes either.&nbsp; They were too hot. &nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">My English grandmother, when she would visit, always wanted to make me wear a T-shirt, when I could hardly bear to wear my shirt, unless deep in the shadows. &nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">For some reason, fourth grade weighs on me today, fifty years later, as I write in a coffee house on the upper Amazon, where it is cool and green and where I have a sweater handy.&nbsp; Shadows no longer intrigue me as much as before, but when walking down a street when the sun escapes clouds, I can feel it burning my now bald head and often cross to where the temperature is cooler and the sun does not beat.&nbsp;</span></div><br /><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div>David Knowltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12525999021776853508noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391799044735518856.post-16277891313249168742013-08-15T07:53:00.001-06:002013-08-15T07:54:05.923-06:00The Fat Drop<div class="p1"><span class="s1"><br /></span><span class="s1">I just fell.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">Afterwards, I felt old and helpless. Especially when two twenty-something young men rushed to help me get up.</span></div><a name='more'></a><br /><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">Traditionally, falling is not a big deal for me. Many a winter I have slipped on ice and gone down, sometimes on my back and sometimes on my butt. &nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">But this time seemed different. I felt fragile and unsteady. &nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">When I fell I was just beginning to walk up a dirt path that connected with an excavation and construction site in Cuzco, Peru near where I have been staying. A bit of loose dirt or a mis-step and I went down.</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">The young men, though friendly and smiling, seemed obscenely energetic. Filled with excess. Very sure of themselves.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">For a second or two, I sat there, stunned, and then pushed myself up and continued down the foot path, thanking the guys, although my masculinity did not let me take their proffered hands.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">Anyway, I had some peanuts in one hand, tightly gripped, and somehow, surprisingly, I did not lose a one. I would have lost them if I had opened my hand to take the help.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">Maybe I was distracted by lifting my hand to pop some in my mouth, while looking at one of the workmen to see if I knew him in order to say hello, and I just did not plant my feet right.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">That I would have to pay attention to plant my feet right seems a sure sign of impending change, weakening.</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">I continued my way down the path, shaken and so careful now about my feet that I forgot to look for the workmen. &nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">For months they have been excavating what once was a steep hill with with weeds, garbage, and a dirt path that connected my street, Jardines del Inca with the colonial neighborhood of San Blas. Every day, I made my way down the path to the city, or back up again, I would watch then shovel at the earth or wheelbarrow the dirt up the steep path--often tangling with pedestrians trying to use the same path.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">After a few weeks, I just started to say hello to them. I recognized them, and they me. &nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">Slowly they peeled back the earth, stepped layer after stepped layer, until one day someone said my name and stopped me. It was a young archeologist I had met when he was a student and waited tables while studying in the local university. &nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">We shook hands, shared an abrazo and caught up briefly. It turned out this was to be a construction project to finally make a paved connection between the two neighborhoods, Balconcillo--where I was staying--and San Blas. Then people would not have to go through the mud and murk of this corner where trash got dumped and stories said thieves often lurked. &nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">The archeologist, call him René, said that the people of the neighborhood were expecting a road capable of supporting cars connecting this corner of San Blas--its many stairways and steep, cobbled paths--with Jardines del Inca, my street, and the outside world. But, the planners from the City Government, where René now worked as a staff archeologist, had decided to make more stairs.</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">Rene had been called in to keep an eye on the digging in case Inca artifacts, stones, or foundations showed up.&nbsp; After all, he smiled, this had been part of the Qhapaq Ñan, the Royal Inca Highway that ran throughout the empire. This was the main way to get from Cuzco’s center to the important Quarter of the empire called Antisuyo.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">René reminded me that the area I lived in had been a zone of finely made terraces with stone retaining walls--a few of which could still be seen.&nbsp; It was a series of broad steps up the side of the steep mountain. Now, though, most of the Inca had been lost because the expanding population of Cuzco needed housing and they took over this land. That was before the days of worrying about cultural heritage, René huffed.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">He said he was not popular with the workmen, or the engineers, because sometimes he had to stop them from advancing, if he saw something. &nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">One day René could hardly stand still. He bounced around like a kid who had just been told Santa would come in the morning. &nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">They had just found, he said, a small portion of the original Inca roadway.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">Not long afterward he said that a neighbor had brought a suit against him, accusing him of destroying the Inca Qhapaq Ñan. In this way, he said, the man was trying to fend off attention from the part of the roadway that lay on his land. &nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">The excavation continued, day after day, week after week. Every day the path was different and some days Jardines del Inca was blocked from the other side to cars because municipal dump trucks and front loaders would come to carry away the mountain of dirt that was piling up. They closed it so they could dump sand, gravel, bags of cement, wooden forms, and construction stone in various sizes. &nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">One afternoon, when the sun was shining intensely and the temperature had risen, I walked down the path towards the city. As had become custom, I said hello to the workmen and they returned the greeting. &nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">I asked how they were, and one man, laughed&nbsp; “it is hot.&nbsp; We are sweating “la gota gorda” (the fat drops).&nbsp; We could sure use a cold soda.”</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">Taking the hint I went to the store and bought them a large bottle of soda and some glasses. I came back with it to wish them well.&nbsp; They said “thank you” over and over.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">My buying them a soda became a routine. I would walk by, say hello and they would say how hot it was. Then I would give them a coin of five soles, or some combination of coins that would allow them to buy the big soda.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">We became friends. Of sorts. &nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">Not long ago, the man who I usually gave the coins to came up to shake my hand and, when I asked how the work was going, said “in a month or so we will be finished.</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">“We want you to be the godfather of the finished construction. You will come and help us finish celebrating.”</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">I was in a hurry and stunned. I was honored but also wondered how much it would cost and whether it would break my budget. I realized, though, that I would not be here when they finished. I could not accept. Needing to think it through, I said “let’s talk about it tomorrow. I have to run now.”</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">That was a couple of weeks ago. The day after our conversation it was raining and I did not have an umbrella. They signaled me to come up when I got out of the taxi bringing me up the hill to my apartment. But I did not want to get wet and so made hand signs for “later.”</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">Since then, we have not talked. When the sun shines I have been busy, working hard because I am leaving in a week or so and need to have lots accomplished so I can go back to the university in the US. After work, when I go down the hill, the workmen have not been there. I have been feeling guilty.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">“You got them accustomed” one of my friends accused me. &nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">I guess I did. But I meant well. Was my giving them a soda or money for one so bad? &nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">I do not think there was anything wrong with them asking me to be the sponsor (godfather) of the party completing the project. That was really kind of cool.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">What was wrong was timing. Now I am embarrassed. &nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">As I lifted the peanuts to my mouth, that is what I was thinking in a flash.&nbsp; I looked at the workman, and was disappointed I did not know him. I wondered where the guys I knew were, and then I fell.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">Now I just feel old and foolish. With my bad footwork, I mangled a very nice relationship.</span></div><br /><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span><br /></div>David Knowltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12525999021776853508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391799044735518856.post-60059825639955871042012-12-04T13:04:00.004-07:002012-12-11T18:39:06.452-07:00Food So Treacherous<br /><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“You won’t like that” insisted the fifty-ish woman in a heavy Chinese accent just after I had ordered the Tiger Skin Peppers. &nbsp;</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“Why won’t I like it?&nbsp; What is it?”</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“Green peppers fried with many vinegars.&nbsp; You won’t like it.&nbsp; Perhaps you like the Tofu with Mixed Vegetables.”</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Like a little boy I found myself getting stubborn.&nbsp; “No.&nbsp; I want the Tiger Skin Peppers.”</span></div><a name='more'></a><br /><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">All that happened last evening in Sandy, Utah as I took a break for food with my friend John prior to going to the airport for my night flight to San Diego, California.&nbsp; It had been a long day of working to have enough accomplished I could leave for three days to go to a conference, and I was very tired.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The peppers were wonderful, blistered in oil with their skin peeling and lightly charred, fleshy and piquant, their smokiness and heat contrasting beautifully with the Chinese black vinegar.&nbsp; It was one of those rare and wonderful finds in the world of ethnic restaurants in the US where most serve a set of dishes that somehow have become codified and stereotypical. &nbsp;</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Despite my pique at being told I would not like something, I wondered why she decided to tell that to me and immediately I thought it must be because I am a “round eye” out of place.&nbsp; I did not order one of the standards. &nbsp;</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Inside I felt reduced to a category, a culture, a stereotypical American who by definition is unadventurous in eating and must not like anything spicy lest he have to turn in his passport. &nbsp;</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Equally stereotypically I chaffed at the perceived loss of my individuality.&nbsp; “I am not one of them!&nbsp; I like spicy food and love Chinese cuisine.”</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Of course I got all defensive.&nbsp; After saying it would take time to cook them, she went to the kitchen, took a while, and then brought out complimentary bowls of hot and sour soup.&nbsp; “The peppers will take a long time to cook.&nbsp; You wait.&nbsp; Ok?”</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">They did take a long time, and when I bit into the much anticipated dish its flavor overwhelmed me and made me feel justified in my individuality and taste.&nbsp; But then, just like the sharp acid of vinegar, something stung me. &nbsp;</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Maybe she did not tell me I would not like the peppers because I was White and Wonderbread-like but because they did not have the peppers in stock and she had to send someone to the store to get them.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Oh my, if that was the case then maybe I should feel guilty for being demanding.&nbsp; Yikes.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">When a young man came and in lightly accented English asked how things were I asked him about the peppers.&nbsp; “I just went to the store and bought them.&nbsp; I am glad you like them”</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So here I sit, nine in the morning in California, feelingt he coastal air and altitude in a little cafe, called Maria’s, advertising Mexican food.&nbsp; The waitress wears a stereotypical, full, pleated dress and embroidered blouse as if she came off a tourist poster. &nbsp;</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The walls have Aztec calendars in <i>papel amate</i>, decorative brick arches, and pottery casseroles.&nbsp; &nbsp;</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I have entered the culture of stereotype in a border region where such things are marketable.&nbsp; They draw clients just like the stereotypical chinese lanterns and paintings last evening commercialize Chinese culture; they reduce it to a series of things that can stand for all the complexity of the rest.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">They also seem saturated with intent, both one’s own and that of some generic, to be defined other among which one has to negotiate identity or communicate with other people.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The waitress come up to ask me in Spanish inflected English if I would like something to drink.&nbsp; “Café por favor.”&nbsp; I replied in what I assumed was her language. &nbsp;</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I have no idea why I answered in Spanish but perhaps it was to locate myself in that world of stereotypical burros, brightly feathered birds, and a cyclical world. &nbsp;</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Immediately I got irritated with myself, since to simply speak Spanish with no permission when she had spoken English to me could be interpreted as a insult in the areas of the border where I grew up. &nbsp;</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Luckily, she answered back in the same language with no pique. &nbsp; &nbsp;</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Once she brought me the chips and salsa that are typical of this side of the border, though stereotypically “Mexican”, I asked for “<i>huevos dicvorciados</i>”, two fried eggs--one in red sauce and one in green, accompanied by refried beans and rice. &nbsp;</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Again I broke the code.&nbsp; I did not ask for the huevos rancheros or the burrito of ham, potato, and egg, instead I went for another code, that of cafes and restaurants in Mexico city. &nbsp; &nbsp;</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">She asked me what kind of tortillas I wanted, corn or flour.&nbsp; Now I hesitated.&nbsp; Normally I just go “corn, of course.” but here on the border that identity weakened.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Flour tortillas are the common bread of much of the border and not, per se, something that Anglos (English speakers) order because they are not used to rolling a corn tortilla in a flute to keep in one hand and nibble at while eating their food. Instead they are ordinary and a sign of being a northerner instead of someone from deep inside Mexico.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">What should I do, I wondered.&nbsp; I was caught on the implications of ordering one or the other.&nbsp; I am from the border and so flour, but I really like good corn tortillas. &nbsp; I had to consult with the waitress for a key and ask which she preferred.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So much struggle with culture and identity, yet so minor and unimportant. &nbsp;</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I tried the chips and sauce.&nbsp; The chips were fried tortillas and not commercial chips.&nbsp; The salsa was thick with ground tomato that looked for all the world like it had been hand made in a molcajete. &nbsp;</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The flavor was wonderful and seductive.&nbsp; At the same time I note I am acting like a stereotypical Gringo from the border with my chips and salsa.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">While I like to be a Mexican food purist and snob here I am acting like someone right out of a commercial, the flip side to the taco bell chihuahua dog. &nbsp;</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">My beans had yellow cheese, and white cheese on them.&nbsp; I was so enchanted by the food that I did not wrinkle my nose at the barbarism of yellow cheese.&nbsp; But, then after the incident with the Fried Dragon Skins, I had to step back. &nbsp;</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Instead of acting a culture role, like a stereotype, why not ask how the code of chips and salsa, or big plates loaded with refried beans and Mexican rice (Spanish rice as we called it in El Paso) and decorated with melted cheese, developed. &nbsp;</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I have never met someone from Mexico who will acknowledge this food as legitimately Mexican, though places tout their authenticity and that includes serves and kitchen staff speaking with a Spanish accent or carrying ethnicity on their skin. &nbsp;</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It is US food, from a border and a zone of encounter filled with stereotypes and the need to market self, created in the encounter of all the forces and processes that make the border what it is, whether a zone of desire or combat. &nbsp;</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Oh well, now to see which tastes better, the red sauce or the green sauce, redolent and pungent from fresh tomatillos.&nbsp; Maybe I will like it and maybe I won’t. &nbsp;</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>David Knowltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12525999021776853508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391799044735518856.post-599269183380362462012-02-13T19:55:00.000-07:002012-12-04T13:05:33.448-07:00The Licensing of Wind<br /><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">July 2003</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">The wind started blowing, lifting grit and spinning it into odd shapes in the air before thrusting it against walls and skin. Normally August is the month of winds, but it started in July. &nbsp;Everyone is talking about it. &nbsp;&nbsp;The wind makes it feel cold, cold and gritty.</span></span><br /><a name='more'></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><br />&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Nevertheless the morning sun shines through the grit, giving a strange, eerie look to everything. &nbsp;Light bounces of the tin roofs and irregular, unfinished brick construction that dot the valley in which the city of La Paz is nestled, as I drop down into it. Illimani, the massive, snow clad guardian of the city stands proudly there, only slightly dimmed by the grit that steals light from its face. <br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">They say that the other day a group of foreign tourists was killed in a sudden avalanche from off one of Illimani's glaciers as they tried to climb its 22000 foot peak. &nbsp;In the summer clouds boil up from the jungle on the other side of Illimani's fastness.&nbsp; They hide it for days on end as they cover it in snow, and bring daily rain to the highlands of La Paz. &nbsp;But in winter, there is no new snow and no rain. &nbsp;Every day the sun shines, although the temperature can feel only a few degrees above freezing at times. <br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Tomorrow is the day of La Paz, a holiday celebrating the founding of this city in a gorge. &nbsp;Already people are setting up banners and marking space for the construction of bleachers along parade routes. &nbsp;The county's president Sanchez de Lozada reportedly wants to push the holiday to Monday, for a three day weekend, like is done in the United States where &nbsp;he grew up. &nbsp;But the people are resisting. &nbsp;From what I hear all plans are on for tomorrow. <br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Back in February Mr Sanchez tried to impose a series of taxes mandated by the IMF and the World Bank. &nbsp;The result was days of rioting, scores dead, and almost two dozen buildings burned and looted, many of them government buildings. &nbsp;People still talk about those days in February, precisely February 12th and 13th. “Where were you? &nbsp;What did you see?” &nbsp;They also talk about February 19th last year, when rains pummeled the city and the river that flows in its bottom, now hidden under the city's main street, refused to stay underground and cascaded in a rush of overturned vehicles, merchandise, and people down the city's main street. <br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">I have been spending my days seeking information about the social structure of the city that will help explain the riots. &nbsp;Why this year? &nbsp;Why not last? &nbsp;Of course the bigger issue is around the role of neo-liberalism and international economic pressure on fragile third-world states. &nbsp; Last week I found the books, this week I am reading, sometimes at home in my room where at times it is cold and at times the sun fills the room with warmth, as the walls keep the wind at bay. &nbsp; Other times I read while riding , crowded in minivans making the way back and forth between El Alto and the basin's floor. &nbsp;And other times I sit in a cafe, with a glass of water in front of me, while I read.&nbsp; <br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">There are lots of numbers about poverty, employment and unemployment, the lack of expansion of the formal sector of the economy and so on. &nbsp;But as I walk I see the people begging in the street, the Indians from Southern Bolivia, dressed sometimes in colorful clothes and sometimes in somber utilitarian dress, selling weavings and toasted grains. &nbsp;All along the streets people hawk wares. &nbsp;There are maybe a hundred thousand people making their living in this informal, small scale commerce. &nbsp;Then there are the big stores and the high rise offices, from which the workers descend into the streets several times a day in high heals and makeup, or the obligatory dark suit. <br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Everywhere I look there are signs of the vitality of Catholicism and the stupendous growth and visible public presence of evangelicals. &nbsp; The numbers come off the page and become the people among whom I move, a strange observer from another place. &nbsp; <br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Things are starting to make sense. &nbsp;I hope I will be able to write a good paper from what I am seeing and learning. &nbsp;But there is something very unfortunate in all of this. &nbsp;I come to get data and write a paper, but the people who have leapt off my pages are caught in this structure where IMF pressure can cause civil strife that lasts days. <br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Yesterday the city was congested by a couple of miles of older people, marching maybe twelve across and demanding improvement, not to mention simple honoring, of their retirement agreements. &nbsp;They represented an older Bolivia, where there was a strong railroad sector, a national petroleum company, a strong national mining concern, and so on. &nbsp;Those have all been privatized. &nbsp;The ways of living and thinking of these people are supposed to be quaint, archaic fossils. &nbsp;But they poured into the street to demand they be recognized and heard, and that the government honor its agreements with them. <br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">After the march cleared and traffic started flowing again, I caught a van back to El Alto. &nbsp;The wind was stronger and I found myself feeling suffocated in the closed and crowded fastness of the van. &nbsp;I arrived home to spend the evening playing cards with Romy, Juan Carlos, Joaquín and their nephew Carlitos. <br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Carlitos, at one moment, said &nbsp;“can we talk privately?” We went into my room, and he nervously asked me if I would consider being the godfather of his licenciamiento, his exit from his servicio militar.&nbsp; In just a few days he enters the military to do his service and he is very nervous, because he is Mormon and he hears Mormons are marginalized and treated poorly, and because of all the negative things people are saying about how the military treats its recruits. &nbsp;He is also nervous because this is a traditionally important right of passage for young men. &nbsp;He stands before adulthood, with a gulf of the unknown and painfully difficult before him. &nbsp;He asked me to meet him on the other side as his sponsor into a new life. <br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Wow what an honor. &nbsp;How can you possibly turn it down. &nbsp; When I said yes, his face broke into a grin that calmed the wind and defied the grit. &nbsp;I started making plans to come back next year for the ceremony.&nbsp;</span></span></div><div><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>David Knowltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12525999021776853508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391799044735518856.post-7653373309918760962012-01-16T15:25:00.000-07:002013-03-27T22:38:56.277-06:00Empanada and Ice Cream<br /><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">July 2003</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">We waited. &nbsp;Knotted around our belongings we huddled against the crowds pouring through the open aired bus station like an end of vacation flood. &nbsp;Monday morning&nbsp; all the kids in Bolivia have to be back in school after their winter vacation and we threw ourselves into the current in order to get back to La Paz.&nbsp; Joaquín and I had come down early Saturday morning to afternoon the station was heavily congested and every company’s desk had a thick crowd clamoring around it.&nbsp;</span></span><br /><a name='more'></a></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><br />Our bus was supposed to leave at three pm. &nbsp;Joaquín and I had debated which schedule to get a ticket for, whether at one o’clock, one thirty, two thirty, three pm or later. &nbsp;Juan Carlos had told us he would be done by noon and for us to get the earliest bus possible. &nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Luckily we chose three. &nbsp;After a morning spent roaming the streets of Cochabamba, watching crowds, eating wist'upiku (an enticing combination of a spicy pastry and ice cream), and my spending far too much money and time in a great local bookstore where I could still spend more money and time, we arrived &nbsp;at the temple at noon.&nbsp; Both of us were worried they would not let us back in, even though all our belongings were inside, since neither of us carried the requisite recommend, but the guards had gotten to know us and just waved us in with a smile. <br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Inside we took a chair, among the pilgrims packing up to head home, and waited. &nbsp;Juan Carlos did not show up, so we waited. &nbsp; One of the temple workers sat down by me. &nbsp;He is a jovial man who plays loud Bolivian music from his room in the temple's housing and whose laugh and sense of humor makes even the walls smile.&nbsp; Originally from the ancient mining city of Potosí, he spent most of his life in La Paz where, according to him, he knew everyone. &nbsp;We exchanged personal stories and he was intrigued with me.&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><br />I asked him how Brother and Sister Leaño were doing, since I knew they were working in the temple. &nbsp;I had met the Leaños when I was nineteen years old and trying to make sense of, what seemed to me, the strange and forbidding city of La Paz, a highly conflicted branch, and difficult companions. &nbsp;Jorge Leaño was a prominent banker and one of the earliest members of the Mormon Church in Bolivia. &nbsp;Soon I started to regularly visit the Leaño household just for the peace, calm and acceptance I found there. &nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">The days that, for some reason, brother Leaño and his family did not attend our little branch with dusty wooden floors and a tinny piano that required work every Sunday for other than harsh dissonance to sound, were days that seemed to have lost something. <br />Brother Leaño radiated peace. &nbsp;For years he has been one of my heros. <br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Over the years when fate has brought me to Bolivia I have visited with him and his family, except for when he was in Colombia as a mission president. &nbsp; I thought&nbsp;this would be the exception, since the temple seemed such a busy place and I did not want to bother with my secular concerns. &nbsp;Instead of answering my question, brother Rojas said come on let's call him. &nbsp; Woah! &nbsp;I did not plan on interrupting. <br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Dressed in my Levis and travel shirt, I found myself being escorted into the temple, into a room to the side of where they check recommendations one last time to ensure that only bearers of that form can enter the holy place. &nbsp;The room was like most temples decorated in high hotel, corporate style. &nbsp;On one wall was a painting of an andean flower called Puye and behind where I sat was a copy of the Anderson painting of&nbsp;Jesus receiving the children.&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Shortly after I sat down, Brother and Sister Leaño, dressed all in white, entered the room, as if all the air rushed out of the place and came in again filled with fresh oxygen. &nbsp; They looked older, after all it has been nine years since I have seen them, but they looked good. &nbsp;When I told them about how I had demurred contacting them, they said it's a good thing you did.&nbsp; Someone would have told us you were here and we would have been hurt. <br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">We talked, telling stories of family and friends. &nbsp;They asked about my life. &nbsp;Never once did they show judgment. &nbsp;I only felt love from them &nbsp; &nbsp;I told them how much they had always meant to me over the years and how important it had been to visit with them. <br />They said, David it has always been recíproco, a word that in Spanish means fully shared or mutual. &nbsp;I felt like crying. <br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">I left the temple and went back to the couch in the waiting area. &nbsp;There was a whole group of people from Tarija, who had made the more than twenty-four hours of very hard travel to the temple over horrible words and now were returning. &nbsp;I told them about when I had gone to Tarija &nbsp;in 1975. &nbsp;You would have thought that I had lived there, by the way they responded. &nbsp;One of the men, a thin, handsome man, with a magnetic personality, told how he had been a missionary on the altiplano and how hard it was to learn Aymara, but how he had. &nbsp;He had worked in areas as a missionary where I have done field work as an anthropologist. &nbsp;We exchanged stories about people we both knew. <br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Afterwards he had worked for an NGO involved in development and we shared stories of travel in rural areas of Peru and Bolivia. <br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Then it was time for them to leave to get to their bus. &nbsp;They gathered their bundles and each gave me an abrazo while inviting me to visit them in Tarija. <br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">By now it was almost two o'clock and still no Juan Carlos. &nbsp;Uh oh, I though, we are going to miss our bus. &nbsp;What to do. &nbsp;So I went to brother Rojas and told him of the situation and asked if there was anyway of contacting Juan Carlos in the temple to hurry him up.&nbsp; <br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">So he called. &nbsp;But Juan Carlos did not come. &nbsp;I felt a little panicky. &nbsp; Then I noticed Joaquín was no where around either and I thought oh my I will have to look&nbsp;for him too.<br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Finally around two thirty Juan Carlos, looking pale, came down the steps from the temple, his arm around Joaquín who had been at the temple doors waiting for him. &nbsp;We grabbed our bags and a taxi and ran to the bus terminal. &nbsp;Joaquín was reprimanding his father for making us wait. &nbsp;Son, he said, you have to understand it was out of my hands. &nbsp;They wanted me to stay until tonight. <br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">While we were waiting in the terminal, we kept meeting people, including a white shirted young man from Las Vegas, who looked slightly lost. &nbsp; &nbsp;Finally they had us board the bus, almost half an hour late. &nbsp;I sat next to an elderly woman traveling with her two<br />grandchildren. <br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">We pulled out of the terminal, as vendors streamed on board the bus to offer food, travel cups, newspapers, and salvation. &nbsp;Just as it seemed we had left Cochabamba, the bus pulled into a station to load gas and we all groaned. &nbsp; At the terminal, the representatives of the bus company told us the reason it was late was that it had stopped to get gas. &nbsp; <br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Finally we pulled out of the city and into the mountains. &nbsp;We climbed, fighting the western sun that occasionally would blind us, for the next five or six hours. <br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">When Juan Carlos and I were discussing some item of Quechua vocabulary compared with Aymara, the lady next to me said, I speak Quechua. &nbsp;So she and I conversed for the next hour, until the movie Water World made conversation impossible. &nbsp;It was followed by Rambo III. &nbsp;In both cases I decided sleep was more entertaining.</span></span></div>David Knowltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12525999021776853508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391799044735518856.post-13529335955305850692012-01-11T07:45:00.000-07:002013-03-27T22:39:16.105-06:00Monuments in the Valley<br /><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">July 2003</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The city nestled around us like a great big hen beneath the mountains that form this valley.&nbsp; They circled it, making a three dimensional wall that bends and folds but always keeps the valley locked in like a very large nest. &nbsp;</span></span><br /><a name='more'></a></div><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">With almost half a million people, Cochabamba at around 8000 feet above sea level is the third largest city of Bolivia.&nbsp; Alway before I have just passed through the city, on my way somewhere else.&nbsp; It has always been an embarrassing gap in my knowledge of this country.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Joaquín and I, after having breakfast among the pilgrims to the white Mormon temple, gleaming hesitantly agains the hillside, in the city´s morning smog, threw ourselves into the city´s nest.&nbsp; We went to the bus terminal to see about tickets back to La Paz.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Because winter vacations end this weekend and on Monday all of Bolivia´s kids have to go back to school, we did not buy anything.&nbsp; They were jacking up prices with abandon.&nbsp;&nbsp; So asked around and found a way to get to this research institute named CERES, that I have always visited.&nbsp; Poor Joaquín had to sit and read the news paper while I looked at their publications and walked away with a bag full.&nbsp; Great stuff f or my research.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">We then went to a park where a tram carries passengers up a steep hill to the top.&nbsp; There an enormous, white Christ was built, like a crest to top the city with religious devotion.&nbsp;&nbsp; We had to wait in line for an hour.&nbsp; Despite the heat of the sun, it was enjoyable just to watch the people of all different social classes and ethnicities.&nbsp; The line broke all discipline when an ice cream vendor came by with a cart of frozen treats. &nbsp;¨Helados, helados, de leche, de fruta.&nbsp; Cómprese helados,¨ he shouted out. &nbsp;People gathered around him and emptied his cart as the pushed and shoved for the ones they wanted. &nbsp;Then for a while the line was calm, as most people´s lips changed color.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">At the top there was a group of Menonites, from lowland Santa Cruz Bolivia, looking for all he world like southern Utah polygamists.&nbsp; The give away was the dialect of old German they were speaking among themselves.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">After descending in the rocking gondola, with a courting Bolivian couple, two Norwegian tourists, looking like they could not get any redder under the highland tropical sun, Joaquín and me, we went to the main plaza, where some kind of public health fair was going on.&nbsp; The square was filled with booths demonstrating proper condom use and talking about potable water, as a group dressed like Indians from Potosí and playing the <i>tarkhas</i>--rough sounding fipple flutes--bobbed and weaved among the crowd.&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">On the edge of the plaza, we found an art gallery with an exposition from three artists from Potosí.&nbsp; It was interesting to mover from seeing the performers attempt Potosí song and dance among the crowd of mostly university age people, to a quiet gallery of older strollers looking at romantic and abstract rendition of Potosí scenes and people.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Then, as the sun light started getting long, we joined a tour at the massive and amazing palace built by the Bolivia tin magnate Simón Patiño, one of the riches men in the world in the early part of the twentieth century.&nbsp; Created in Italian marble, Damascus silk, and Lebanese cedar, and lowland Bolivian mahogany, the mansion was a melange of quotes from some where else, as a very wealthy man claimed status and position.&nbsp; He drew heavily on greek mythology, like the neoclassical columns that looked like marble, but like those in Brigham Young´s tabernacle are made of painted wood.&nbsp; These are hollow to hide steel beams that really support Patiño´s massive construction.&nbsp; One room I particularly liked was an amazing quote from the arabesque alhambra of Spains that contained a massive pool table, with what looked like gold leaf on its legs.&nbsp; The table had only one hole.&nbsp; We were told it was for playing carambola, a kind of pool that just uses a few balls.&nbsp; The table sat under brightly colored, arabic arches, embossed with arabic script.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">As we arrived at the temple to meet Joaquín´s father, it was hard for me not to compare the massive robber baron construction of the early twentieth century, with the massive corporate, religious construction of the early twenty-first century.&nbsp; Patiño quoted heavily from the vatican as a claim to legitimacy.&nbsp; Interestingly the temple quotes corporate chic as its own claim to social, and spiritual correctness.&nbsp; The relationship was too clear for me not to see. &nbsp;&nbsp;Nevertheless it is a powerful building.&nbsp; Even more powerful is the devotion of the pilgrims who come from all over Bolivia to undergo religious ritual.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Today, we leave in the afternoon for La Paz.&nbsp; We will climb out from the city´s nest into the mountains and slowly rise up to the fourteen thousand feet where La Paz sits beneath snow clad mountains that rise to twenty-two thousand feet in this very vertical landscape.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></div>David Knowltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12525999021776853508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391799044735518856.post-73591259184728753222012-01-07T17:55:00.004-07:002012-01-08T03:03:01.058-07:00Do Not PresumeLa Paz, 2003<br /><br /><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">I am staying with the Escobar family in a beautiful home they have slowly built over years in a neighborhood called Santiago II which was founded with miners from other parts of&nbsp; Bolivia who lost their jobs in the collapse of mining in the early eighties.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span><br /><a name='more'></a></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Every day I take a minivan which carries passengers to the Ceja, the eyebrow of the altiplano.&nbsp; From there I take another one down into the city itself. Today they changed the routes to the Ceja, infuriating people and placing us in an enormous traffic jam in the narrow streets of the market district near the Ceja.&nbsp; The&nbsp; streets were lined with small stores selling all kinds of goods from&nbsp; auto-parts to food. They would often spill out onto the sidewalks.&nbsp; Many sidewalks also had Indigenous women, dressed in full cholita dress, selling small amounts of goods.&nbsp; Add to that a&nbsp;thick knott of honking vans, trucks, buses, and private cars, with exhaust fumes filling the air, and you have a sense for this morning´s adventure.&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">I&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;generally get off the van near the old Basilica of St. Francis.&nbsp; The plaza in front of it has often been a place of gathering in La Paz, but they (the church, the city?) have fenced it in behind&nbsp;green wrought iron, I guess in an attempt to control the uses of this important public space.&nbsp; In the middle of the square they have placed a huge, low lying historical plaque recognizing the foundation of the Franciscan mission as a bridge between the Spanish&nbsp;city on one side of the river that now runs under the main street, and the Indian villages on the other side. The plaque speaks of the role of multicultural contact in the formation of&nbsp;Bolivia.&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Curiously that sounds all pat and finished.&nbsp; But one of the current struggles in Bolivia is over a very strong and resurgent Indian movement that challenges the notion of multiculturalism and the role of Europeans, even five-hundred years removed, in Bolivia´s life.&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Last&nbsp;February the society collapsed in riots and nineteen buildings were burned, some of them very important governmental buildings.&nbsp; As Juan Carlos Escobar was explaining to his son Joaquin yesterday, in 1979 and 1982 the state attacked its people.&nbsp; This was an attack by the people on&nbsp;the state.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Right now I am gathering bibliographical material on the crisis of February and the uprising. My goal is to understand the current challenges and transformations of the nation state.&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">But besides the academic interest, that means roaming the city looking at bookstores and book vendors trying to find the publications that discuss the event.&nbsp; Books are often ephemeral down here, meaning that you depend on private collectors and used book sellers.&nbsp; Already, though, I am finding a fascinating series of discussions on the new social movements such as those of the Indians, the coca farmers, and the peasants without land.&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Anyway that is what I am doing, getting lots of exercise at high altitude tracking down of books and documents.&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">As I approached the red metal door breaking the expanse of wall, I saw a blue car&nbsp; in front of it.&nbsp; People were sitting in it.&nbsp; That was unusual.&nbsp; After everyone had told me how violent the Alto has become, my street sense warned me to be careful.&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">I was one house away from the door when suddenly a man and several young men jumped out of the taxi with force.&nbsp; I had to stop and think, “What do I do?”&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">They came towards me.&nbsp; As I was preparing a response, they yelled out my name. “David, you are back”.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">At once I recognized them.&nbsp; They were Juan Carlos—who drives a taxi for a living and is the husband of Romy’s sister Jacqueline—his sons, and Fabio his nephew.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Oh my, how things can suddenly change, when a different frame is applied.&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">The long table at lunch was filled with family, and even more ate downstairs, as we caught up on each others lives.&nbsp; Juan Carlos offered to drive me to the Ceja after lunch.&nbsp; We piled into his car, the young men—his son, his nephew—Juan Carlos and I.&nbsp; The young men asked me what kind of music I liked, and so I responded talking about classical and then Latin music, tropical music and Bolivian music.&nbsp; I turned the question around and they asked me if I knew who U2 was.&nbsp; And what did I think of this song and that song.&nbsp; “I was just listening to the latest by Def Leopard” and so on.&nbsp; I was at a loss.&nbsp; Of course I knew who they were talking about, but I have so little knowledge of American and English popular culture that I was adrift in a sea of ignorance and could only sit there and ask humble questions for them to share their interests with me.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Later in the evening, Romy and Juan Carlos had a gathering in their house, a kind of Family Home Evening, as Mormons call it.&nbsp; They had invited several young people over from the neighborhood, only two of whom showed, and then two young missionaries.&nbsp; One of the two was from a rural area outside the city of Cochabamba and the other Elder was from Valparaíso Chile.&nbsp; I had asked him where he was from, when I first shook his hand, and he said, “Can’t you tell?”&nbsp; The accent is that notorious.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">His family has over five generations of Mormons, although he was not raised in the LDS Church.&nbsp; Instead he had a step father who was a devout Jehovah’s Witness.&nbsp; After his step father and his mother broke up, when he was a teenager, he opted for the Mormon Church.&nbsp;&nbsp; He seems a very orthodox and committed young man.&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><br /></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">This is a very different Latin America, in some limited ways, that that of traditional Catholicism or of stereotypes.&nbsp;&nbsp; I am amazed every time I walk down the main streets of the city of La Paz to see how strong and publicly visible the non-Catholic presence is.&nbsp; Despite the tight relationship between Catholicism and the state, millions of people practice different faiths.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">This is a world where it is handy not to presume too much.&nbsp; After all the Gringo listens to Latin music and the Bolivians listen to Anglo Saxon rock. &nbsp;</span></span></div>David Knowltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12525999021776853508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391799044735518856.post-67722424125186591962012-01-05T06:36:00.005-07:002012-01-05T06:36:59.035-07:00Enchanted by the Lights<br /><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">La Paz, 2003</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">We arrived at night, three hours late. From near the lake, an hour out, you could see the city’s lights at the plateau’s edge glowing like a jeweled coiled snake in the night. El Alto de La Paz, by daylight is a gritty suburban city, of unfinished brick constructions and urban works gathered on the lip of this high plateau, the altiplano, that stretches between the twin ranges of the Andes. With somewhere between half a million and a million souls it is the highest city on earth. At the lip, or to change images, the plateau’s eyebrow, as it is called in local Spanish, it is above 14,000 feet high and slowly drops downward from there until the houses become scattered and empty fields claim the night.</span></span></div><a name='more'></a><br /> <div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">If by daylight it has a strange hard scrabble and utopic feel, by night it gleams with mystery and an urban swagger, as we drive down a broad avenue lined with four, five and six story buildings. Many of them still have sheaves of steel stretching up from them, as if they had a case of bed head, waiting for new construction to leave them well groomed.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Once we pass the eyebrow, the main body of the city of La Paz, Bolivia’s capital, opens before us. This is one of the most stunning views on earth. A valley with lights climbing from more than a thousand feet below right up to the brow opens before us. It is as if instead of being a flat coil of infinity, the lights took on weight, depth, and dimension. It is as if we were on the head of a body, whose arms reached up to encompass us, and it was covered in sparkly glitter and sequined clothing shining so brightly that only through their brilliance can we sense the shape of the body behind them.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">As the highway drops downward, you move into the lights. They are now above you, beneath you, and at your side. La Paz is a marvel.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Enchanted by the lights our bus took a wrong turn and got lost until a policeman told the driver where he should go. So he had to block an entire avenue’s traffic in order to make a slow, agonizing u turn with this large, awkward navigator of the night. (There were only three of us who had made the journey from Cusco, me and a couple headed to Argentina.)&nbsp; Our entire journey had been like that. We left an hour and a half late for reasons that seemed to change every time they were explained, from the need to fix a flat tire, to problems with loading fuel, and so on. In fact we were through the gate of the terminal in Cusco, when the driver decided to slowly back up to the gate from which we had departed, taking another fifteen or twenty minutes, for another two passengers to come on board for Puno. We were not supposed to stop in Puno, but we did, for a ten minutes that became an hour. In each city we passed through the driver got lost. He was fine as we climbed up the valley from Cusco to the pass called La Raya beneath glaciated peaks, from which the altiplano opens up. He was fine as we went around the immense and amazing Lake Titicaca as dusk set in, turning the lake from intense blue, to grey, to deep black. He was even fine at the border, where a narrow, weak bridge spans a river draining the lake into marshes and a salt lake further south. Only one large vehicle at a time could cross the bridge, creating a traffic jam of behemoths, belching fumes into the night. We passengers had to descend and negotiate a path among these grumbling beasts, while dodging tricycle carts loaded with huge sacks of onion headed for La Paz, and occasionally a passenger sitting in their basket like some strange potentate. From among their labyrinth we had to figure out where the immigration offices of both countries were, walk across the strangely empty bridge, like a weird, nocturnal no man’s land, and emerge on the other side to wait for our bus, while the night just seemed to get deeper and more intense, and cold settled around us.&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">But we made it. My friend Romy and her husband Juan Carlos were waiting at the terminal. As I descended from the bus, they shouted out my name and ran up to give me a warm, sheltering hug.</span></span></div>David Knowltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12525999021776853508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391799044735518856.post-65927466020207424772012-01-02T05:30:00.002-07:002012-01-03T18:30:22.985-07:00Salvation and the River of Bones<br /><br /><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">July 2003</span></span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">At eight in the morning the streets of Cusco are usually almost empty. The city seems to start later than most, maybe because it lives at night. Its cafes and clubs are full till early in the morning, especially on weekends. Tourists and students keep the colonial section of the city dancing. There aren’t many tourists this year and you can feel their absence around the Plaza.</span></span><br /><a name='more'></a></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">This Sunday morning the streets were filled with individuals and families of Cusqueños walking. Many had candles and were on their way to mass. Others were just walking.&nbsp;</span></span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">On the Plaza de Armas a reviewing stand was set up in front of the Cathedral while a sea of teenagers and school kids, dressed in white and grey uniforms mills around. On Sundays they hold a major civic ritual, the raising of the flag. Formal patriotism is strong here. The students will march around the square, the boys goose stepping, in that jarring gait that shakes the cheeks as their back leans to compensate for their flailing, snapping legs.&nbsp;</span></span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Behind the reviewing stand, the doors to the cathedral stand open, as do those of the Company of Jesus, the massive Jesuit Church around the corner from it. Inside the Jesuit Church one feels the Spanish Baroque, lots of gold leaf on carved and twisting cedar, with massive paintings decorating the walls. The Cathedral is different. It is dark with light illuminating strategic spaces. While the Jesuits have benches for a congregation to sit and listen to mass, the Cathedral is primarily a place to stand and mill around in odd corridors and strange niches. It is almost a kind of spiritual labyrinth. Inside one of its towers the last Inca is supposedly buried. according to popular legend.&nbsp; Some day in an earthquake he will come forth, they say, to change the world in a renewed Inca empire.</span></span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Today I cut through the crowds, my head down and deep in thought. It seemed that every time I had to bend my course to avoid another clump of people a vendor would approach to insist my shoes were absolutely filthy and that they must be shined that very instant and giving me their names as if someone were calling role and I had to check them off with full ponderousness. Or they just knew that they had postcards or necklaces that I absolutely had to have. Their seriousness seemed to imply that these were tokens that somehow would allow me to approach some kind of tourist or consumer salvation. I ignored them as best I could and tried to keep a steady pace.&nbsp;</span></span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">I left the plaza and found the street named Tullumayu lined with rough Inca masonry, unlike the very finely carved and fitted stonework of the palaces near the main square of this formerly holy and Forbidden City. The River of Bones is the name of this street. Under it still flows the river, I am told, like a secret current of desire, whether Eros or Thanatos I cannot say. I am not sure that Freudian and Greek contrast actually makes a difference here. On top of the hidden river that used to mark one of the boundaries of Inca Cusco I walk, past the Colegio Andino in a colonial palace on Inca walls, where I lived and taught a couple of summers ago. I continued past the Jatun Rimac Pampa, the big square of the Oracle, as the name means. This is a major landmark with ancient significance. It is a crossroads with significance. On one side of it is my favorite bookstore in Cusco and a great library whose collection of Andean materials is superb. I continue down the River of Bones for two more blocks to find a flagstone clad church with a metal steeple reaching to the heavens. All around the chapel people in white shirts mill. I do not see the women and girls in their finery, because the white shirts stand out as a blinding uniform.&nbsp;</span></span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">This is where the Mormon River of Bones ward meets. The name makes me chuckle. It has irony and depth in ways that most Latter-day Saint congregational names do not. I do not know whether I will meet the ancient Greek porter who will help me cross the river into the underworld or the Inca Supay, the Lord of the underworld who also governs riches and erotic desire. Instead I find people shaking hands and calling each other Brother and Sister.</span></span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Two years ago, while working on a manuscript on Mormonism in Latin America, I attended this ward every Sunday to see in real life the things that I was writing about. I finished the manuscript and sent it off to the press for formal evaluation just before coming to South America this year. And so this time I just came for myself, although I had forgotten to bring a tie with me and felt improperly dressed in my tie-less blue shirt, in a failure of my supposed native knowledge. The chapel was surprisingly full. On the one hand it felt Utahn. On the other hand you could easily see the global reach of the Utah based Church and the strong commitment many have to it, at the same time they subtly rework it to fit their needs and their concerns.</span></span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">I left the Mormon chapel and walked to the Avenue of the Sun which sits on another hidden river, I believe the Watanay. I do not remember what its name means. It is the other boundary of Imperial Cusco and today is lined with ponderous financial, governmental, and Utilities buildings. I walked back up it towards the main plaza, which in Inca times was called the place of sorrows. I again walked against the crowd of pedestrians, many in gray uniforms and against the call of vendors. I walked past the Qoricancha, the ancient temple of the sun, with its field where the Incas sowed a garden of gold plants and raised herds of golden animals. On top of the temple rises the monastery of Santo Domingo, but the Qoricancha still stands out. Although it no longer controls the seasons and divines fate it still draws tourists, seeking authenticity and knowledge, from around the world to its doors, parapets, and Inca chambers hidden in Spanish Baroque rooms.</span></span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">At the end of the street a row of Spanish palaces with colonnaded, shaded walks stands over the Watanay River. Behind them is the second Inca square, the counterpart to the Place of Sorrows, where the flag raising has just ended. Today it is a small, intimate square, with a fountain and lots of flowers called the Plaza of Celebration.&nbsp; It is fun to sit on its benches, eat cake from one of the street vendors, and watch the world go by, as if it were one of the little birds flitting from bush to bush or as if it were the one of the pigeons cooing as they search for scattered corn on the square’s paving stones under a noontime sun.</span></span></div><div><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div></div>David Knowltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12525999021776853508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391799044735518856.post-60070480593726808382011-12-31T23:37:00.001-07:002012-01-03T18:31:30.883-07:00A Godson<br /><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">July 2003&nbsp;</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Cusco, Peru</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">A thin shelf of shadow graced the side of the pavilion in the plaza’s center, across from a sixteenth century Catholic church. The rest of the plaza seemed almost empty, except for cascades of burning sunlight.</span><br /><a name='more'></a></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">After walking half a mile in the intense shine from the highway where the bus from Cusco had dropped me, I walked around the plaza looking for a van or car that could take me the next seven kilometers to Pitumarca, the rural town where I planned to take some gifts to my godson. There was nothing and I debated walking the distance or waiting for a ride. But the intensity of the almost noontime sun filled me with dread. The sun can burn so fast at this altitude, raising blisters across the top of my bald pate, on my nose and ears and then days later the now dead skin would slough off in large sheets. I had lost my cap and worried about being out in the sun at noon.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">So I gingerly crept into the narrow shadow to find a place wide enough to accommodate my bulk. I was surprised to almost step on a sixty something woman in white stove pipe hat, a blue shawl, and a wide, pleated skirt. I stepped back into the sun, walked past her and reentered the shadow.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">In Quechua she said "It’s hot isn’t it." It’s winter here. We were both bundled up, the air was warm but not hot and the shadow was chilly. "Yes it is hot" I said thinking about the burning sun and wondering if I had already crisped my head in the half mile I had already walked. I remembered I had a tube of sun block. I pulled it from my bag and began to rub it over my head, face, neck, and nose. "What’s that, she said" "Sun block" "Can I have some." I squeezed an abundant amount into her outstretched hand and she imitated me in applying it to her face.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">"Where are you going?" I asked. "To Pitumarka and you." "Me too. Do you think a vehicle will come soon to take us?" "Who knows. They say there should be one by one o’clock. Do you live in Pitumarka?"</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">"Who me, the gringo? …No I live in the US but am going to visit my godson. What about you, do you live in Pitumarka?"</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">"No I live in Cusco. But my mother is here from Lima and called telling me to come see her. So I am returning after almost ten years to see my mother. She left for Lima when I was a girl, because her husband was working for the municipal government there. So you have a godson in Pitumarka. Did you used to live there?"</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">No I work in the university in my country and we brought some students to Pitumarka two years running. I got to know a few people there and Exaltación Huaman asked me to be the godfather of his son. It was a real honor."</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">"Where did you baptize him?" "At a mass in the church in Pitumarka. I told the priest that I am not Catholic and he said it did not matter. So I held the two and a half year old boy, while the priest anointed him with holy water and holy oil. It was a wonderful experience.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">"Where are you staying in Cusco?" I have eight grandchildren and two of them need baptizing? Can you be their godfather?"</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">"Wow that’s a lot of responsibility. Maybe if we knew each other better? Have you ever been to Lima?”</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">"Yes. I was there last year. I do not like Lima it is dirty and too agitated. You never see the sun. Is it from smoke or what?</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">"Wait I hear an approaching vehicle. I’m going to go see."</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I ran from the shade to the street to impede the path of the oncoming vehicle. It was a maroon pickup with a man, under a broad brimmed hat, inside. "Are you going to Pitumarka?"</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">"No. I am just taking a spin around this town, Checcacupe."&nbsp;</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I walked to a candy cart where two kids sat under a broad, cloth shade and bought two Peruvian chocolate bars.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Once in the shadow again I handed one to the woman and opened the other myself. We sat in silence, letting the savor of chocolate fill our senses.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">"Are you staying the night in Pitumarka? You know they will be so happy to see you they will kill some guinea pigs and make you a special meal. What are you taking for you godson? Clothes?"</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">"I’m taking him some toys from the United States. I bought him a car with batteries that makes music and noise at the same time its wheels can make it move slowly. And I bought him a safari jeep." Do you think he will like them?"</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">"Yes, he will be very happy. Are you staying the night?"</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">"No ma’am. I can’t. This is just a quick trip. I have to be back in Cusco tonight."</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">"They will be disappointed. What is your name? Mine is Elena Qolqe. Where are you staying in Cusco.?" "My name is David Knowlton and I am in the Hostal La Prisma on Matará street." "How long are you going to be there? I will bring my grandchildren by to meet you." "I am leaving early Monday morning for Bolivia. I do not think there will be time." "When are you coming back?"</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Our heads turned as the low roar of an approaching vehicle penetrated our consciousness. "I think that is the van," she said as we both stood up, shouldered our bags and walked towards the oncoming, white van, glaring in the sun.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">"Nice to meet you Mrs. Elena." The van stopped and I stood back from the door to let her enter. Suddenly a hoard of people came from God knows where and blocked me from the door, as they all pushed forcefully inside as if they were ground meat thrust into a sausage casing. I did not feel like pushing and shoving.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Elena moved to the back of the van as I waited. But the van was full. There was no room left for me, unless I could fold my frame into a two foot square bag. "Damn! What am I going to do. Please make room for me." A military official hidden among the crowd pushed a girl off a seat and said "Here mister. Here is a seat for you."<br /></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I had a great visit with Exaltacion his wife and two kids. My godson, Lenin, loved the cars. He could not keep from running it all over the plaza in Pitumarka. Kids came running from everywhere to see what he had. Not long after I arrived they did brink a table into the small shop they had on Pitumarka’s square and brought out overfilled plates of chicken, mutton, and potatoes. It was way more than I could eat. But you have to try and have to eat all you can.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Lenin just turned four last June 22. They told me how a year ago he fell into a pot of boiling water and was severely burned. He is miraculously ok now and only has a little scarring, although he spent almost a month in the hospital in Cusco. The distance between Peru and the US sometimes in painful.&nbsp;</span></div>David Knowltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12525999021776853508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391799044735518856.post-9740055081576032472011-12-29T23:59:00.002-07:002011-12-30T06:00:34.597-07:00The Senses of the Street<br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span>Cusco, Perú</span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">July 2003</span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Yesterday was a day of errands.&nbsp; But errands with a sensuality that is at once new and old.&nbsp; It is not that of home and has not yet become so omnipresent as to pass into the background, uncommented and unnoticed. &nbsp;</span></span><br /><a name='more'></a></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">To get places I walk.&nbsp; Through my shoes my feet feel the roundedness of old cobblestones or the flatness of stones shaped like bricks.&nbsp; They feel the smoothness of cement and the softness of asphalt.&nbsp; Sidewalks are not broken by tree-roots into jagged planes like at home, but are smooth, broken only by square, open holes for utilities with no cover to protect the unwary pedestrian.&nbsp; Your feet have to see and sense. &nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">The sidewalks are capricious though.&nbsp; They flirt, seducing sometimes with broadness that tempts you into an almost Texas-like gait.&nbsp; Other times they dip their eyes and shrink into a size no larger than a curb.&nbsp; At times like that you almost have to walk sideways, and if too many of you are trying to occupy the same tenuous space you get forced into the street and play tag with cars and buses, with their incessant rattles, growls, and bleating horns.&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">While at home if you walk, you feel the splendid gringo isolation.&nbsp; So few people walk that there is both a camaraderie of those beyond the hermetic temple of cars and the separated, expansive, concrete space of the self.&nbsp; Here the sidewalks are filled with people.&nbsp; Walking is normal.&nbsp; You know people are there.&nbsp; Not only can you see them, individuals, clumps, and crowds, but you feel them as they bump your shoulders and press sometimes against your sides.&nbsp; They have sound.&nbsp; Bits and pieces of conversations beat against you in a stream of disconnected, displaced consciousness that still feels connected and alive.&nbsp; It is as if every person on the street trails sound, slowly dissipating in knots of meaning behind him or her.&nbsp; We pass through each others sound wakes, sometimes oblivious and sometimes with a quick bump of comprehension.</span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Then there are the sales people, much more intrusive than the telemarketers or panhandlers at home.&nbsp; “Postcards mister” accompanied by the flap of a small, cardboard portfolio snapping open. “Shoe shine sir.&nbsp; Your shoes are dirty, I will dust them.”&nbsp; And the beggars, hands out, displaying interrupted limbs and broken bodies with pained eyes that look as if the came down from a church’s wall, an icon made life.&nbsp; “Please a little help.”&nbsp; “Mister shoe shine.&nbsp; No? Well maybe later.&nbsp; My name is Carlos. Later then Mister”. . . “You promised me yesterday mister.&nbsp; I shine your shoes.” &nbsp; “I wasn’t here yesterday.”&nbsp; “You promised mister. I shine.&nbsp; I do a good job.&nbsp; You see.” “Postcard mister”.&nbsp; “You need a doll for your wife.&nbsp; See a beautiful doll.&nbsp; Hand made.”&nbsp; “Please mister buy a watercolor.”&nbsp; “Sweaters mister” “Gloves? Look baby alpaca.”</span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">You either ignore them, walking with an imperious stare of disengagement.&nbsp; I am not here with you.&nbsp; I do not see you.&nbsp; I will not interact with you.&nbsp; Or you talk.&nbsp; “No gracias.”&nbsp; Simple and terse.&nbsp; Or you play and joke, but the goal is still to pass by, money intact.&nbsp; In any case you are caught in a baroque world where you have to define a role at every step, where each one challenges and changes your sense of self only to fold into a new definition with the next step.&nbsp; There as many folds here as there are on the gold leaf altars of seventeenth century churches. &nbsp; The self is a labyrinth.&nbsp; But not a private one.&nbsp; It is always challenged and on display. &nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Sound is everywhere.&nbsp; Rare is the pastoral silence adored and codified into law by gringos.&nbsp; Everywhere there is sound.&nbsp; Young men whistle loud individual chirps that make the caw of a crow seem sedate.&nbsp; These are their calls, marking space and calling friends. &nbsp; “Let’s go and hang out.”&nbsp; &nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Radios blast, pulsing dislocated bits of music or news.&nbsp; Cars honk at every corner while deciding if they have to stop for the light or stop sign, or just continue onward while warning any and all, “I am here. Beware”.&nbsp; Saws wrench the ear with a harsh whine as they tear wood or flagstone.&nbsp; Hammers thud into adobe, or crack against a nail piercing wood. &nbsp; Water splatters in softer but percussive waves as a boy comes out of a building and splashes the waste from his bucket onto the street. &nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Policemen keep a metal whistle in the lips as they signal traffic with their arms and the throaty sound of the bead vibrating just past their lips. &nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">As you walk past an old church, down the long outer wall of its nave, well before you round the corner to encounter its glorious facade, the pungent smell of urine surrounds you in sharpness.&nbsp; You pass someone with rich, earthy perfume filled with must.&nbsp; A popcorn vendor tantalizes with the unmistakable scent of corn bursting from heat and oil.&nbsp; Eucalyptus reaches out in a menthol steam as another vendor pours glass after glass of a hot elixir.&nbsp; Meat roasting on a spit throws out an enticing charred smell.&nbsp; Pungent exhaust informs of a bus’s passing.</span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Time is different.&nbsp; It is tangible, not so much in the weighty ticking of the clock’s morality, like at home, but in the sense that although people can race down the street, suddenly you find yourself behind people slowly sauntering.&nbsp; Or a bench opens up and you sit as the city passes by.&nbsp; Time is a something you can give and as a result time is woven in strands, like a rope you knot marking your interactions with people.&nbsp; There is the simple, terse knot of I don’t know you and I do not care.&nbsp; There is the elaborate, almost Celtic, knot of loop after loop that says I enjoy you and your presence.&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">This sensuality has yet to fade into a background where the errand is greater than the process.&nbsp; &nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Today has also been a day where I am aware of language.&nbsp; Not Spanish.&nbsp; I am too used to the tongue of Cervantes, even spoken with Andean accents.&nbsp; That is innate for me.&nbsp; But instead there is another language. I pass three women standing tensely, blocking the sidewalk.&nbsp; From their lips escapes a beat of a different tongue, different combinations of sound and waves that cannot exist in Spanish. &nbsp; At times like that you cannot help but realize how foreign Spanish is, even after five hundred years.&nbsp; There is another tongue, another way of being encompassed within it that belongs to this place.</span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">I know what it is to live in a world with multiple languages, where your identity and social compass are contained in the words that play on your lips.&nbsp; You live in a space of comprehension, but are always aware that there is another world just beyond your grasp.&nbsp; In my world, that of the US Mexican border, I always understood both Spanish and English, even though in every conversation you define identity by the way you choose to combine the two, or not as you want.&nbsp; But there were other languages, Tewa, Navajo, Apache, whose sounds were very familiar and comforting, even if I did not understand more than a word or two.&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Here it is different.&nbsp; I open my mouth and people say “oh you speak such good Spanish”. In every encounter, such as when I went to buy my bus ticket to La Paz for Monday.&nbsp; “Where are you from?”&nbsp; “Oh you speak such good Spanish.”&nbsp; “You speak such good Spanish”.&nbsp; My gringo-ness is thrown in my face, time after time.&nbsp; When I was young I could avoid my Whiteness, but now, my Nordic looks are laid down like a gauntlet at the beginning of every conversation. &nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: left;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Every time I have to defend my right to speak a language I grew up with.&nbsp; It makes me miss the subtle code switching of home.&nbsp; But then it shifts.&nbsp; Today many people have asked me if I speak Quechua.&nbsp; “Uk chhikallata” a little bit, I answer.&nbsp; Suddenly things change.&nbsp; I pass from the curious Nordic Spanish speaker to a stranger who is interested in the local glory.&nbsp; “Maymanta kanki?” “Ima sutiyki” and so on in the standard questions of first encounters.&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Then they start talking and Quechua rattles off.&nbsp; But my ears are cold and my tongue is thick.&nbsp; I find myself answering back in Spanish, apologetically. Yes I can speak it.&nbsp; I can explain its grammar to you.&nbsp; But it is still strange on my tongue and in my ear.&nbsp; I retreat to my foreignness.</span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">It would be so easy now to really speak the language.&nbsp; I have flirted with it for so many years. &nbsp; When I was nineteen I found myself in a town where Quechua was spoken by most people.&nbsp; The lady who had a store across the street from my house would teach me bits and pieces.&nbsp; I learned how to identify myself as a Mormon missionary “Ñoqayku kayku jesucristoq iglesiamanta.”&nbsp; I learned how to bear testimony in Quechua.&nbsp; I was fine as long as no one spoke back, like so many missionaries whose monologues sound so secure but who fade when engaged in discussion.&nbsp; I vividly remember the times the language flowed from my tongue fluidly and smoothly.&nbsp; I remember later being a twenty-four year old anthropologist back in Bolivia after studying the language for a year in graduate school.&nbsp; I was riding in the back of an open truck as it slowly wound its way up the steep curves of the dusty road between Sucre and Potosi.&nbsp; The other people in the truck were talking in Quechua and I joined in. &nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Four five hours, or so, we talked.&nbsp; No religion. Nothing but ordinary talk and play.&nbsp; For me it was like being in heaven.&nbsp; I could speak.&nbsp; I could fit in.&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">But then I went to live in an Aymara speaking village and Quechua, the warm language of valleys, got displaced by the tattoo of the snare-drum like Aymara and the valleys faded before the enchantment of a very high plateau and an azure inland sea.&nbsp; &nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Some day I will stay and learn to feel comfortable in Quechua. &nbsp;</span></span></div><br />David Knowltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12525999021776853508noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391799044735518856.post-16027863718837967062011-12-28T20:39:00.001-07:002011-12-30T00:02:49.363-07:00DoctorCusco, Peru<br />July 2003<br /><br /><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">This morning the news seethes with concern about the resurgence of the Shining Path guerrilla movement.&nbsp; In the eighties and nineties it created a civil war that led to more than thirty thousand dead, although to be sure the government was probably responsible for most of the dead. &nbsp;</span></span><br /><a name='more'></a></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Evidently the group has taken the side of the peasants growing Coca to process into cocaine for export.&nbsp; They have obtained, as a result, a ready source of cash and seem to form a threat.&nbsp; &nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">It is too early to tell.&nbsp; People are very frightened and concerned about the possibilities of a violent future.&nbsp; Like the people here, I remember those years and hate to see them return, despite the amount of social injustice one sees every day.&nbsp; In the US the word terrorism is thrown about a lot, but despite September 11 people have no idea what it is like to live under an extended terrorist threat nor what provokes people to take up arms against the state and civil society.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Outside a morning haze obscures the sun.&nbsp; Cars of commuters and tourist buses heading to the sacred valley and the ruins above the city emit a cloud of gray, stinky exhaust.&nbsp; But that fog seems an appropriate image for the haze people feel on the future, especially at a time when support for the current government is plummeting as it is increasingly unable to meet its promises to provide jobs.&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Yesterday, after I left the internet café to make my way towards the Centro Bartolomé de las Casas to renew friendships and contacts, I was shocked out of my thoughts when I heard some one close to me say “Doctor”.&nbsp; I looked up and it was one of the staff people who had helped us when we brought students.&nbsp; It always surprises me to be in a country distant from my own and to have people recognize me as I walk down the street, particularly when I have just arrived.&nbsp; But it should not surprise me.&nbsp; I have years and years of interactions with this town.&nbsp; Its massive Inca stone foundations and walls and its Spanish colonial architecture carry much history of wars, conquest, and expanding empires, including the current one.&nbsp; But they also invoke many, many memories of the years of my life.&nbsp; There is no other place in the world that has seen me in so many different conditions and statuses as this.&nbsp; I feel very much at home. &nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Yesterday I met with the new director of the CBC, the major graduate school and non/governmental organization with which we have been working in the University of Utah’s program.&nbsp; His name is Gustavo Hernandez and he moves with a snappy energy as if his tall and lanky body were made of the steel that keeps heavy trucks steady.&nbsp; His sharp eyes dance across the room, although in their depths one can sense the heaviness of his new job and the desires he has to perform well and accomplish something.&nbsp; It is not easy to take over a new agency and try to give it a new course and stamp.&nbsp; Many of the staff are leaving in protest, but he is excited and hopeful.&nbsp; We had a great conversation.&nbsp; It helped that he is a fairly recent graduate from the anthropology department at the University of Texas, the same place I got my Ph.D. Being from there here is about like being from Harvard in the United States.&nbsp; There is an incredible Texas good old boy network throughout Latin America, of which I guess I am a very small part.&nbsp; We decided to try something new for the service learning programs here in Cuzco.&nbsp; I have to spend some time thinking and writing an innovative program for him.&nbsp; I look forward</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">to getting to know him better in future years and to tightening my connection with the CBC.&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">In the shadows, just inside the very heavy, studded Colonial doors of an annex to the Jesuit’s Church, a man dressed in traditional Indian clothes sits at the side of piles and piles of exquisite weavings.&nbsp; I walked in from the sun, took off my sunglasses, put on</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">the regular ones and said “Buenas tardes don Timoteo, allinllachu”.&nbsp; “Ah Doctor” he answered as a smile spread across is lightly wrinkled face.&nbsp; Timoteo is an amazing man with an amazing history.&nbsp; He was an orphan from a rural, Indian community in Puno.&nbsp; His family had no land.&nbsp; He was one of the poorest of the poor. But he pulled himself up first by his sandal straps and later his boot straps to become mayor of a Town in Cusco called Pitumarca and a person who has been a catalyst in the revival of traditional weaving and its marketing.&nbsp; He filled me in with news about Pitumarca and its people.&nbsp; When I leave the internet café this morning it is to meet with him and see if I am going to Pitumarca on Saturday or if my friends are coming to Cusco.&nbsp; Timoteo was going to call for me. &nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">In the evening, I climbed the narrow stairs of the colonial Cuesta de San Blas.&nbsp; I walked by the massive Inca walls of the Archbishops palace and past many stores selling handicrafts for tourists to a large metal door, more appropriate to a garage than a house,</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">beneath a sign for the Sisters of Mercy, I believe. &nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The more ordinary door inset in the huge metal one opened and a Colombian woman, Claudia opened her arms with a huge smile, “David, where have you been all&nbsp;this time.”&nbsp; Claudia is the wife of a rotund and bearded Frenchman who was the former director of the CBC.&nbsp; Jean Jacques had invited me over for drinks, but when I entered their second story apartment with a balcony above the building’s common, large patio, Jean Jacques was sautéing chicken and I knew I was staying for dinner.&nbsp; Last time we had seen each other I had cooked for them and now they were cooking for me.&nbsp; We had a wide ranging conversation for hours on anthropology, politics from all over the globe, modernization and globalization, art and literature, until the clock seemed sluggish with the heavy numbers it had to bear.&nbsp; All the time there was a painting of an angel on the wall whose look seemed to bring support and sanction for our conversation while candlesticks with the sacred Inca Sun, star, and moon slowly disappeared under the weight of melting white wax.&nbsp;</span></div>David Knowltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12525999021776853508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391799044735518856.post-69052120879975036262011-12-28T01:08:00.001-07:002011-12-28T01:17:08.741-07:00The Sharp Sun<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black;">July 2003 &nbsp; &nbsp;</span><br /><span style="color: black;">This morning the sun is sharp.&nbsp; It slices through the shadows and flattens people's faces like a scalpel removing excess.&nbsp; Though it is early, the light cuts through shadows and the dust of night in broad rays with a quality only found at high altitude where the atmosphere is thinner and the air dry.&nbsp; I always forget how&nbsp;the sun pierces at this altitude, until I return.&nbsp; When the sun is out the temperature rises, when shadows prevail the air is around freezing.&nbsp; You live the constant contrast of light and shadow, hot and cold, but not in the abstract. Instead, like the sharp sun, they are felt viscerally.</span><br /><span style="color: black;"><br /></span><br /><a name='more'></a><span style="color: black;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black;">I arrived in Peru&nbsp;very early Tuesday morning, shortly after Monday’s midnight.&nbsp; We were supposed to arrive at Lima’s Jorge Chavez airport around ten pm on Monday, but were delayed in a massive thunderstorm in Atlanta.&nbsp; Water pummeled the airplane. &nbsp;We had already boarded and they had closed the doors.&nbsp; The rain flowed off the rounded plane in sheets and the view through the windows became even more surreal as we looked out through water.&nbsp; A water fall rushed off the wings and left foam on the tarmac.&nbsp; <o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="color: black;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black;">You would think we were delayed because of the waves of water.&nbsp;But no!&nbsp; After we had&nbsp;been sitting on the&nbsp;immobile airplane for an hour or so breathing ever warmer and danker air, the captain announced that Ecuador had revoked our over-flight rights.&nbsp; We were stuck.&nbsp; We were neither in the US, officially, despite the ground under our wheels, nor abroad.&nbsp; We did not know if we would ever be able to leave.&nbsp; A battery of lawyers and officials in Washington DC and perhaps Quito negotiated with the Ecuadorian government a temporary pass so we could continue on our way.&nbsp; We had become some sort of pawn in foreign policy struggles between our government and that of a country to which I was not even going. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black;"><br /></span><br /><span style="color: black;">In one of the ironies of long distance travel I was, in the wisdom of the computer, sat next to a young man in his late twenties, with an angular face pulled taught nervousness and excitement of travel.&nbsp; He was from the University of Illinois and was on his way to Cuzco to study Quechua.&nbsp; He was going to the school in an old part Inca, part Colonial building where I had taught a year before.&nbsp; He was a graduate student in ethnomusicology and I a professor of anthropology. He was tall and lanky and seemed a bit nervous.&nbsp; He turned to the window and then looked back at his watch many times as we began to converse.&nbsp; The music of the Andes, with its five toned scales and relationships with the times and seasons had captivated him and he wanted to make a career of studying it.&nbsp; <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black;"><br /></span><br /><span style="color: black;">His main professor in the states is a friend of mine, another lanky man who had led the Andean music ensemble at the University of Texas in Austin, where I also studied.&nbsp; I had not seen my classmate for a long time.&nbsp; Instead, as often happens in academe, I was left with memories of his intense look as he would correct my finger placement on the Charango—a ten stringed, small, guitar-like instrument—while reading his articles and book.&nbsp; Our relationship had become textual.&nbsp; &nbsp; <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black;"><br /></span><br /><span style="color: black;">After a couple of hours of more nerves and hoping the attendants would open the door and let us enter the airport while we waited, the captain announced over the intercom that we had a temporary pass and to prepare to take off.&nbsp; The flight was smooth.&nbsp;I slept as much as I could for the almost seven hours of bustle in the cabin, since I had stayed awake all night prior to departure. &nbsp;&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black;"><br /></span><br /><span style="color: black;">At the Lima airport, after waiting in line at immigration and entering a big room with two snaking carousels, mine were the last bags to appear it seemed.&nbsp; I waited and waited while suitcase after suitcase was pulled off the rotating black band.&nbsp; I was worried because I was carrying a huge duffle bag stuffed with clothing and some toys for a Peruvian family I had barely met.&nbsp;&nbsp; <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black;"><br /></span><br /><span style="color: black;">Late, the night before my early morning departure from the US, they appeared at my door in the company of a couple I knew who was also Peruvian.&nbsp; “Please, will you take these as luggage to our family?&nbsp; There is no way we can send them.&nbsp; Please we beg you” they pleaded with that tone from the Andes that makes it very difficult to say no. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black;"><br /></span><br /><span style="color: black;">Still, I made them open the bag and take everything out.&nbsp; I said I would not travel with it unless I knew every thing it contained.&nbsp; It was densely paced with rolled dresses, pants, blouses, shirts, socks and pajamas for their family members in Peru.&nbsp; Everything had to come out and be unrolled.&nbsp; I felt every item into my hands to make sure nothing was sewn into it.&nbsp; On the one hand, it is embarrassing to go through someone’s packages like that, but on the other hand it is respectable to be cautious since, as a Bolivian and Peruvian Aymara proverb says, You shouldn’t trust even your own shadow.&nbsp; <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black;"><br /></span><br /><span style="color: black;">The packed duffle bag was enormous and very heavy.&nbsp; I worried it was oversized and mentioned that to the family.&nbsp; They said “we will pay if it is.&nbsp; Even though you already have your luggage limit, take it please for the love of God, we beg you.&nbsp;&nbsp; We will pay for the extra bag.&nbsp; Here is money for what the airline says it will be and if it comes to more, we will pay you.” <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black;"><br /></span><br /><span style="color: black;">In the morning, well before even a summer’s dawn, I trudged into the airport loaded with my own bags filled with things I had to carry for people to Bolivia and Peru, as well as gifts for people I knew, and the monster black duffle.&nbsp; It was over weight and over size, as I had expected.&nbsp; I had to pay one hundred dollars of my own money, but did so knowing my friends would cover it out of honor, since I was doing the favor for their friends.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black;"><br /></span><br /><span style="color: black;">When almost no one was left from my airplane in the luggage room my bags finally came and customs just flagged me through.&nbsp; Thank goodness.&nbsp; I was worried how I would ever explain the bag filled with clothes that obviously were not for me. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black;"><br /></span><br /><span style="color: black;">Outside customs, where people crowd the rail to greet incomers in a thick, tightly tied, and shouting knot of people, I looked to try to recognize the son in law of the lady who had given me the duffle bag in the US.&nbsp; All I had was a description.&nbsp; He was thin, tall and angular, and was a policeman who had traveled eighteen hours from Arequipa to get the bag from me.&nbsp; As a scanned the crowd, one man who looked like the description, as did several, looked at me expectantly and hopefully.&nbsp; We made eye contact.&nbsp; “Are you the son in law” I asked?&nbsp; “Yes and are you David Knowlton?”&nbsp; &nbsp;I handed over the bag, received his formal thanks and reflected&nbsp;about how hard immigration is for families that are suddenly separated by thousands of miles and impenetrable government bureaucracy.&nbsp; I also thought about how difficult it can be to send things back and forth and how those of us who do travel regularly become kinds of couriers.&nbsp; I suspect it has always been thus, with travelers telling stories to&nbsp;people on both ends who hunger for a view of&nbsp;their kin and who carry packages of goods whose value is as much symbolic as material.&nbsp; They symbolize love and ongoing concern. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black;"><br /></span><br /><span style="color: black;">It feels weird to travel as burdened as I am.&nbsp; But over years of going back and forth my human connections to this part of the world have become ever richer and denser. That is reflected in the amount of luggage I carry. &nbsp;&nbsp;Nevertheless I envied the tourists, with their sleek, plastic covered back packs.&nbsp; I was more like the Peruvians with their unmatched bags tied together and their boxes bound by tape.&nbsp;&nbsp; Since I was a gringo, though, I was a strange hybrid, neither the one nor the other, but someone who exists in between.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black;"><br /></span><br /><span style="color: black;">As I was giving the duffle bag to the Arequipan police man dressed in jeans and a polo shirt,&nbsp; Mrs. Navarro and her daughter Rocio Coral rushed up to me, having seen me stop to talk with someone in the crowd.&nbsp; Mrs. Navarro is the mother of the woman who introduced me to the people of the black duffle.&nbsp; Her daughter married to a man from Lima who served as a Mormon missionary in Colombia with a man who is a friend of mine in Utah. &nbsp;My friend helped his friend and wife immigrates to the US.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Since I brought a filled suitcase for them, they insisted I stay the night at their home and had waited at the airport in the foggy Lima night for three hours.&nbsp; So we grabbed a taxi and entered the nocturnal labyrinth of the working class and lower middle class neighborhoods north of the airport in the Chillan river valley.&nbsp; <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black;"><br /></span><br /><span style="color: black;">Lima extends over three important river basins the&nbsp;Lurin, Rimac, and Chillan, from South to north on this coast that has almost no rain fall and hence almost no vegetation except near the rivers.&nbsp; Historically these were three separate cradles of ancient civilizations.&nbsp; Their valleys are dotted with ruins to witness to the thousands of ears of history.&nbsp; Now they are part of the same city.&nbsp; Modern homes of brick, cement, or adobe crowd the pyramids of the ancients.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black;"><br /></span><br /><span style="color: black;">I had never been&nbsp;to these northern neighborhoods before.&nbsp; But I felt very much at home.&nbsp; These are kinds of neighborhoods I became&nbsp;very familiar and comfortable with from living as first a Mormon missionary and then an anthropologist in Bolivia.&nbsp; They also filled books and articles that I had to read in my graduate training and professional work.&nbsp; English speakers would call many of the houses shanties at best and the neighborhoods shantytowns, but to me they were homes and the rows of streets curving into the night seemed filled with promise. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black;"><br /></span><br /><span style="color: black;">We sat talking until Rocio could hardly stay awake.&nbsp; Her eye lids would thicken and her head droop, although she tried to stay part of the conversation. She had to get to work early the next morning and had an hour commute by bus to&nbsp;her job in a pharmacy company in Callao.&nbsp; But her mother insisted on preparing me a dinner, after midnight, of suprema de pollo, rice, a salad and so on.&nbsp; You cannot avoid eating, without causing offense.&nbsp; I was tired and my digestion did not want to work.&nbsp; But I ate, accepting the Andean custom of massive hospitality.&nbsp; It really was a lovely touch of concern.&nbsp; Finally as my eye lids seemed to grace my toes we called it a night.&nbsp; I slept a&nbsp;few hours&nbsp;before getting up exhausted to wait for a phone call about whether I had a ticket to Cusco.&nbsp; Given the kind&nbsp;offer of Carmen Rosa to get me ticket through friendship networks, I had entered the Peruvian world of favors and friends.&nbsp; This is really how&nbsp;Latin America and much of Latin American business works.&nbsp; So finally I was informed I had a flight out at two pm.&nbsp; I could have gotten a ticket myself, but it is better to be part of these networks.&nbsp; After all I have become part of this country and society because of my work.&nbsp; It is almost impossible not to accept the people's love and their huge hearts.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black;"><br /></span><br /><span style="color: black;">As soon as the time came through the mother, frustrated by my resistance to have anything for breakfast but a glass of juice, immediately ran to the market and began cooking.&nbsp; She was not satisfied with fixing me a single lunch but gave me a double lunch that I&nbsp;had to eat until finished.&nbsp; The lunch came at ten am, so I would be ready to go to the&nbsp;airport at eleven thirty. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black;"><br /></span><br /><span style="color: black;">So stuffed like a thanksgiving turkey--strange irony in this image--I boarded the plane for Cusco, with no reservation, as I often&nbsp;travel, and found my way from the airport&nbsp;to a hotel.&nbsp; In the airport I ran into the guy from Illinois again.&nbsp; We were on the same flight once again, compounding ironies.&nbsp; I helped him get to his place at the Centro Bartolome de las Casas, where I have worked and where I am going later today.&nbsp; Then I collapsed on my bed and slept.&nbsp; Finally this morning my stomach no longer feels&nbsp;distended and I have escaped the sun to an internet cafe.&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></div>David Knowltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12525999021776853508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391799044735518856.post-84234705471507757932011-12-28T01:00:00.001-07:002016-03-18T11:56:24.825-06:00More WritingSince last I wrote on this blog, much has happened. &nbsp;I shall detail it briefly, but more I just want to recognize the chunk of my life and writing that the posts before this represent. &nbsp;It is much later and the blog, thanks to Google, still lives and--to my surprise--attracts readers, so I shall add to it.<br /><a name='more'></a><br /><br />My sabbatical finished and the routine of the university, like a liturgy, demanded my voice and body. &nbsp;In many ways, though, I have yet to return. &nbsp;Peru has become much of my day and my nights. &nbsp;Cusco, which I said would never be home, became the place I return to every chance I get. &nbsp;Everywhere else now seems mythical.<br /><br />Though my boxes of books, furniture, and artifacts of memory are in Utah, my self whether in or out of my body lives where the Incas trod. &nbsp;No I am not talking about soul loss, or separation of body and soul. &nbsp;At least I do not think I am. &nbsp;It is just that Cusco has so absorbed me that even when elsewhere, and I have been many elsewheres in between the last post and this pecking on the keys--Bolivia, Lima, Piura, Warsaw, Manchester, Guernsey, &nbsp;Greater Salt Lake, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Madison, Baltimore, Washington D.C., and so on. &nbsp;Partially the absorption comes from working on the blog www.cuscoeats.com, yet more importantly it is because of people I met a week or so after my last post who have taken me in.<br /><br />All that is too much and requires writing in some future. &nbsp;For now I shall post texts I wrote before I blogged but that dealt with my travels. &nbsp;They were travelogues I wrote "home", when I had such a place that was not Cusco and not where my suitcase lay, that I emailed out. &nbsp;I shall give them new life by adding them to this blog, though they are another set of journeys. &nbsp;And, they necessarily are fragmentary because of the oddity of writing--it happens when it happens and can never be complete. &nbsp;In addition, I do not know if the electronic files on my computer actually has the complete set any more. <br /><br />Entropy happens. &nbsp;That should be a bumper sticker. &nbsp;Entropy just happens. &nbsp;Things become disorganized. <br /><br />So to at least break for a while that dis-appearence of my experiences and writing, I shall post them here for people to read, or not.<br /><br />In the meantime Cusco beckons, but I am not quite ready to write reflectively about that. David Knowltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12525999021776853508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391799044735518856.post-23709082254319004942010-04-06T08:29:00.006-06:002012-09-27T06:51:51.668-06:00Tourism, Travel, LifeBack in La Paz, I sit in my favorite Alexander’s cafe. For a little over a month, I have not been here. But it is like home. The staff greeted me and asked where I had been.<br /><br />Where have I been? The question is not only relevant for them but also for this blog. I disappeared from both for a month, although the timing was a little different. Where have I been? And, why?<br /><a name='more'></a><br /><br />If only that question were really easy to answer. I told the people in the cafe that I had been in Peru, mostly true. But places on the map tell so little of where one has really been. <br /><br />Unfortunately, a more complete answer must engage a writer I have been reading. Alberto Fuguet, the founder of the McCondo movement of contemporary Latin American literature and a brilliant novelist of the interactions among popular culture, urban alienation, and Chilean life, published a book of essays entitled “Apuntes Autistas” (Autistic Notes) whose first section is about travel and writing. As a known writer he has done much traveling, to give readings, attend book fairs, and to give lectures. But he has also traveled in his personal life, since he grew up in California and later went to Chile and became a Chilean writer. <br /><br />Fuguet’s movement is blasphemous for those who think the epitome of Latin Literature is Gabriel García Marquez, or Isabel Allende, and magical realism. Instead, he writes of a world of cars and films, reporters and drugs, skyscrapers and smog. This is not the world of people floating or butterflies filling a room. It is not a world that separates the Latin America from the United States with its NIN and Bruce Springstein. Instead it is a world shared, although some people in it have English as their only language, while for other people it is the language of much of the culture they consume, while their ordinary speech and thoughts are in Spanish. <br /><br />He frankly pisses a lot of romantics and tourists off. They may go to Machu Picchu with NIN pounding in their ears, but they hope to touch the rocks and be transported to a world of magic so unlike the suburban neatness, or urban grit and noise, of home. They expect locals to play a Marquezian role as magicians who channel what they think they do not have. <br /><br />In his first essay Fuguet comments that much travel advertising and indeed literature is about the idea of “escape”. This word “has more to do with departure than destiny.” yep. I agree. In fact the destiny almost does not matter as long as it can portray what is not at home, the place of departure. <br /><br />Fuguet argues that this creates the point of departure as a place of “stress” that must be relieved by long hours on a plane, and then being somewhere not home. Of course that “not home” erases the reality of places that are homes and that live in the same world we do, with stresses and strains like the endless honking of horns. <br /><br />Where have I been? I voluntarily exiled myself from Bolivia where--like it or not--I have been so many times that it is natural. As people teased me in Peru, even though the Spanish I learned as a child is Mexican, with its own strong accent and vocabulary, I have spent so much time here over so many years and so much time with Bolivians in the United States that my Spanish is now mostly La Paz. Other than for a few "ay Chihuahuas" or "¿mandes?", I whistle, slur, and drop vowels like any paceño. <br /><br />Yesterday, I almost left my camera in an internet cafe. Immediately on crossing through the door, I realized and turned back. But in that moment of realization I reverted to Mexican and exasperatedly muttered “Chihuahua”. Why? I have no idea other than that is the way people spoke around me when I was young in El Paso. It is kind of like my “y’all”. It is just something I keep, perhaps like linguistic souvenirs from the places of my life. But I turned around, went in, and started talking to the attendant--Fernando--in my best Bolivian and he gave me my camera. <br /><br />Fuguet writes about how he and the prominent Bolivia writer Edmundo Paz Soldán, who teaches at Cornell, became instant friends when they realized they both spoke Spanglish and shared a passion for popular culture. Somehow, their linguistic souvenirs are powerful enough to make friends and also to keep people at bay. <br /><br />So, yeah! I was in Peru. They do not speak like the people of La Paz. We can communicate, mostly, although there were many moments when I had to ask my equivalent of “huh” and break my Paceño Spanish with a perfect Mexican “¿mande?” When I was young, I thought “¿mande?” was stupid and much preferred a simple and vulgar “¿qué?” But now, I seldom seem to say that three-letter encyclopedia of a word and instead ¿mande? comes from my mouth to my and--no doubt--other’s surprise. <br /><br />In Lima, a long stretch of a city, congested and hot, I rode buses packed with people and had to stand, all the way from the Avenida Arequipa down the very wide and very congested Javier Prado to Constructores, about an hour all told. Lots of horns honked. People got on and off. I overheard lots of pieces of foreign conversations, and got bumped and shaken. <br /><br />I did find Fuguet in a bookstore by the Óvalo Gutierrez on the border between San Isidro and Miraflores. But, really most of my time was spent in Starbucks looking at people and writing, or sitting at the table with an enticing and cultured family having long conversations about most anything you can imagine from sexual orientation to abstruse political theory, with long interludes on art and folklore. In so many ways, for me, that <i>sobre mesa</i>, talk at the table, is as close to heaven as you can get. <br /><br />Starbucks is another matter. But I did find things to write there that were supposed to be long posts to make it to my blog. They did not, but more on that after one such lost post. <br /><br /><blockquote>Starbucks, Lima. A coffee house with wifi. Not my favorite cafe by any means; only its wifi makes it tolerable. I would rather be in the Haiti , where many of Lima’s intellectuals and artists meet and hang out. <br /><br />But I am in Starbucks. I sit on a couch for hours, letting my fingers play over my laptop’s keys while occasionally watching the people around me. <br /><br />On the back wall, where a gap opens that leads to the bathrooms stands a series of three, small tables with two chairs each. At one of them, for almost three hours, a thirty something man sits a white apple lap top open before him. Dressed in a dark blue suit and an open collared, light blue shirt which shows off his taught abs, he has several day’s scruff on his face and a small yarmulke on the crown of his head.<br /><br />On the table, by his side, a book entitled Zohar stands upright against the wall.<br /><br />A group of women, of changing number sits a table or so away. They gathered a couple of small tables and various chairs to make themselves a place in the corner. Upper middle class housewives, they chat in the rushed and jumbled tones of Lima about their kids, husbands, and shopping. <br /><br />I cannot help but overhear the women’s conversation, though I am not listening. They are close, a little closer than the man and are speaking loudly. <br /><br />One by one, they take a place at the man’s table. He asks their name and then writes something on his laptop. I can’t hear other than occasional burst of conversation and would not deliberately listen in, even if I could. But the pieces I hear suggest he is asking them about their lives and they narrate stories while his eyes and cheeks raise and lower, widen and close to what they say. I hear him speak, “as the books says...” and then nothing more. <br /><br />I cannot help but suppose they are studying Jewish mysticism, but really have no idea other than for the traces that come my way, while I try to concentrate on my writing. <br /><br />Lima is a large and cosmopolitan city with traces that flow around the globe. <br /><br />Some years ago, in January, I found myself in Jerusalem with a small group of scholars, attending intensive seminars at various think tanks and universities. Most were mainstream to conservative, although we did attend a seminar at one progressive institution. A rabbi, known for his scholarship on Jewish law and the state, spoke to us. His talk was dense but enjoyable. Afterwards, over coffee and cookies he spoke with us personally. When finding out about my connections with Peru and Bolivia, he mentioned that for years, he had been the rabbi of Lima. Though he now lives in Israel, he maintains contact with Lima’s complex Jewish community, part of which was here before me in Starbucks, if the Yarmulke and Zohar really mean that. </blockquote><br /><br />What’s up with that? The almost post, I mean, not the reality of the guy in the Starbucks counseling all kinds of bourgeois women. <br /><br />I suppose he could have been a Peruvian Jew with red hair and a big-splotching birth mark on his face, like Vargas Llosa describes, completely exoticizing a part of the reality of his country in the form of living people with real communities and an interest in Torah, Talmud, and even Zohar, although if it is like everywhere else, most Jews are probably like most of their neighbors and not terribly religious. But he was not exotic. he just was a dark haired buy, in a dark blue suit and a light blue, open collared shirt, doing what Starbucks is for. He was taking advantage of coffee house culture to make a place to meet with people interested in him and what he had to say. <br /><br />The only reason that is any different in Lima from in Salt Lake is that Peru is the home of Machu Picchu and a place where people are supposed to have thousands-of-years old traditions, including a mystical site known as Machu Picchu. <br /><br />I went to Peru about a month after Machu Picchu closed due to massive rainfall that cause flooding, and mudslides. Cusco had almost no tourists. Like a spigot that was turned off, the flow of tourists came to a sudden halt. And Peru’s economy shrank. <br /><br />To be honest, I loved walking the beautiful plaza de armas in the center of town without the hordes of tourists, although I did not enjoy the crowds of vendors that would fix on one to try to hawk that exotic which really does not matter, except it is not home. <br /><br />I left Lima after two weeks and returned to Cusco for a week to write and get myself readapted to the altitude. I loved the normality of an almost tourist free city, but one with services like places with internet where I could write. I also had long conversations about this, that, and archeology with people I already knew and people I just met. <br /><br />It was hard to leave, to return to Copacabana, even though I know so many people there and feel so at home. Cusco is not home. Even though I did teach a graduate class there once upon a time and stayed for almost a month, and even though I have been going there most years since 1976, it will never be home. It is a place precisely to not be home. Not in the “escape” that Fuguet describes, but like when I lived in Colorado Springs and would just drive to Denver to be away. If I had lived in Denver, if it had become home, I would not have enjoyed the difference so much. This was not about avoiding stress and going to some fantasy other, that really is some inverted mirror image of how I imagine my home to be. It is, instead, a place where I do not go to work, where I do not have obligations to neighbors, where I do not have the same bed., if I decide to stay. <br /><br />Lima used to be like that. I used to love to go there to sleep long hours, tranquil in the coastal oxygen-rich mugginess, or wander long hours in its streets and sit in its cafes knowing no one. It was a place I could be alone with all the richness and trouble that can mean. <br /><br />Now Lima is not that. A family broke my solitude. I bless them, though I also need to find another alone place to sleep and wander in solitude. <br /><br />But solitude can be found in many places and in many times. In Copacabana, after the fiesta of February 2nd, I began writing about the events this way. <br /><br /><blockquote>A sliver of shade, cast by a wall offered some relief from the sun on the broad atrium of the basilica just after noon. A line of teenagers dressed in jangles and I sat on the ground in the shade, waiting for mass the end. It was a long wait.<br /><br />Inside, the Franciscan bishop, with his miter and staff, introduced religious friends from Germany and had them speak. He gave a long homily about how though it is the feast of the Virgin of Candelaria one should not lose sight of the real focus, the baby Jesus she presented at the temple. He was to raise the new parish priest, Father Felix Apasa, to that position. <br /><br />And we waited, outside the gleaming baroque nave with its gold-leafed curlicues and hidden felines on the main altar where the Madonna carved by the Inca Tito Yupanqui, looked out from her place in the vertical hierarchy of space and time.<br /><br />“When you enter someone’s house, what do you do?”, we heard from the sound system inside. “You greet the inhabitants of the house. Everyone wave to the Virgin, our mother, in greeting and say ‘Hola mamita’.”<br /><br />The sun beat the broad atrium causing the paving stones to shimmer in strange rhythms before the domes giving shade to the three crosses. Like a few other seventeenth century churches in the altiplano, Copacabana’s basilica has both an inside and an outside chapel. We were in the outside one where the boundary between the sacred and profane seemed unclear. <br /><br />Four women were tearing petals from flowers at the main gate and loading them in plastic bags. An old, blind man sat on the ground, marking the main path to the inner chapel, in a ragged, much-patched suit coat and slacks, with tire-rubber sandals on his feet and his hands outstretched. Across from him a similarly clad elderly blind man scratched at a violin to pull from it the notes of the Virgin’s hymn, a plastic cup at his knee. <br /><br />“To your feet Mother comes a suffering man, surrounded by anguish and a thousand embarrassments.”<br /><br />From inside the basilica a choir sang in the tense, high pitched voice and scale of indigenous music, but I could not pick out the words. The sound reminded me how the priests had borrowed Andean hymns --in a process as old as Christianity creating itself int he Roman Empire--and given them new content in local languages. Many of these hymns continue, along with new, popular songs similarly reworked; in this case Simon and Garfunkle’s “Sound of Silence”.<br /><br />Women in broad gray skirts and sweaters were trying to keep a row of silver braziers lit and stocked with coals and incense, against the outside wall of the porch by the entrance to the main chapel. <br /><br />Members of various bands, instruments by their side, stretched out in whatever shade they could find. </blockquote><br /><br /><br />Then, a man dressed as a caporal, a hyper-masculine and aggressive figure from a dance of the same name came up to me, sat, and asked who I was and why I was there. In a zig zag of revelation and questions he, for some reason, trusted me and told me some things that suddenly made the last two year’s research in Copacabana find clarity. As the mass ended, he got up, gave me his cell number, and said goodbye. I got up, left the shade--and my solitude--and went into the bright sunlight of the fiesta. <br /><br />But, I lost my voice. Not for my academic writing. That continued well. I lost it for this. It was as if I had crossed some ritual threshold and no longer had a means to narrate Copacabana. I tried, but only found an absence of words. <br /><br />Copacabana, the object of much of my writing, the place where I was, had changed for me. And I did not know how to tell that. <br /><br />I left for La Paz, and then returned for Carnaval in Copacabana. My comprehension of the town deepened exponentially and I was drawn ever more into its depths. Something changed about me and my relationship with the town. I crossed a rubicon, but I do not yet know how to tell it. <br /><br />After Carnaval, I briefly returned to La Paz to reflect and write. But as February drew to a close I needed to leave Bolivia to save at least a month of the potential time allowed me as a US citizen in the course of a calendar year. I knew I would need to return for Holy Week, from Palm Sunday to Easter, and I knew I needed to come back in early May with another student, to introduce her to people so she can do her work. So I took a bus to Cusco and arrived before dawn, drawn and sick. <br /><br />The intensity of the February Feast and Carnaval, plus whatever changed, left my defenses down to the cold viruses that pullulate in the highlands. As soon as I was over that, I got a bacterial infection and had to take antibiotics, then that was over and I immediately got another cold, then bacterial infection and ... then my bowels...<br /><br />Major transitions do not come free of cost. My body‘s March in Peru was part of my cost. As was my silence, it more than the other. <br /><br />Tomorrow, I leave La Paz again for Peru, because of the visa. But now I am going home to Cusco, strangely. No longer am I in a word of travel, or a world of literary reflection, as Fuguet writes. Neither Macondo nor McCondo are what I see and experience, though there is both Megadeath and the mystical, but the realism is neither the exotic magical of García Marquez and many others nor is it the neoliberal realism of Fuguet. Mine is neither tourism nor travel. Instead it is the contrast Fuguet fortunately provides: living. <br /><br />Whether occupational hazard or methodological necessity, this complex shift is part of what many of us ethnographers go through. We leave travel, and began to live in places foreign to our family and friends in the places where we have jobs and other lives. And, I still do not no how to tell the story. So much has become silence at the same time so much is loud and brilliant. <br /><br />Lima:<br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Y9ZfATALwKo/S7tK5ftiHfI/AAAAAAAAAFM/jMgYG7ryMOQ/s1600/DSC_0143.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5457037725114965490" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Y9ZfATALwKo/S7tK5ftiHfI/AAAAAAAAAFM/jMgYG7ryMOQ/s320/DSC_0143.JPG" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; height: 214px; width: 320px;" /></a><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Y9ZfATALwKo/S7tK49yxbLI/AAAAAAAAAFE/jySMOzQ24LI/s1600/DSC_0131.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5457037716010134706" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Y9ZfATALwKo/S7tK49yxbLI/AAAAAAAAAFE/jySMOzQ24LI/s320/DSC_0131.JPG" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; height: 320px; width: 214px;" /></a><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Y9ZfATALwKo/S7tK4Kzb05I/AAAAAAAAAE8/L5IfKXD1WXA/s1600/DSC_0126.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5457037702322705298" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Y9ZfATALwKo/S7tK4Kzb05I/AAAAAAAAAE8/L5IfKXD1WXA/s320/DSC_0126.JPG" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; height: 320px; width: 214px;" /></a><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Y9ZfATALwKo/S7tNH4kMRVI/AAAAAAAAAFU/g0O9UJczV-Q/s1600/DSC_0165.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5457040171328095570" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Y9ZfATALwKo/S7tNH4kMRVI/AAAAAAAAAFU/g0O9UJczV-Q/s320/DSC_0165.JPG" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; height: 214px; width: 320px;" /></a><br /><br />Cusco:<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Y9ZfATALwKo/S7tNIE0Bd2I/AAAAAAAAAFc/y8pzQPi8R9w/s1600/DSC_0183.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5457040174615721826" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Y9ZfATALwKo/S7tNIE0Bd2I/AAAAAAAAAFc/y8pzQPi8R9w/s320/DSC_0183.JPG" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; height: 214px; width: 320px;" /></a><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Y9ZfATALwKo/S7tPtjv2CKI/AAAAAAAAAFk/aJAhl4mkHlg/s1600/DSC_0169.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5457043017598109858" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Y9ZfATALwKo/S7tPtjv2CKI/AAAAAAAAAFk/aJAhl4mkHlg/s320/DSC_0169.JPG" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; height: 214px; width: 320px;" /></a><br /><br />Copacabana:<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Y9ZfATALwKo/S7tPt8CW99I/AAAAAAAAAFs/Tt-63KOoV7E/s1600/DSC_0172.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5457043024118216658" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Y9ZfATALwKo/S7tPt8CW99I/AAAAAAAAAFs/Tt-63KOoV7E/s320/DSC_0172.JPG" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; height: 320px; width: 214px;" /></a>David Knowltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12525999021776853508noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391799044735518856.post-47368433687294318912010-03-20T10:56:00.003-06:002011-12-28T00:26:17.799-07:00On The Voice“Let’s be the voice”--shouts the man at the microphone. His voice fills the air of Cusco’s plaza on this, the third day, of Catholic school children marching around the plaza in mass, representing their schools and hence the Church, while claiming a civic right.<br /><a name='more'></a> <br /><br />When he yells “¡Seamos la voz! (Spanish for “Let’s be the voice”) the school kids passing before him--right now they are elementary school students, mostly girls--scream. Again the air fills with sound, now un-amplified by the microphone. <br /><br />He then says “for those who have no voice”. “A strong shout for life”. <br /><br />Today’s march is opposed to abortion. Religious schools and the Church have stepped into an interesting space normally filled with political demonstration. Certainly on Thursday, before the school kids from the Salesian schools could parade, labor unions filled the plaza arguing against the privitization of water rights in the Amazon. They yelled “El Agua no se vende” (“Water should not be sold), despite the efforts of the national government, following neo-liberal plans, to make mineral and water rights for sale, even on collective lands. In neighboring Bolivia, similar efforts in favor of Bechtel’s water division, led to a massive uprising that, when combined with concerns about the country’s natural gas policy, led to the overthrow of the Bolivia’s government and the appearance of a majoritarian, anti-neo-liberal government that troubles the US. <br /><br />The marchers in Cusco’s streets are well aware of Bolivia’s experience and that awareness gave force to their cries of “the people united will never be defeated.” Of course it is a struggle for who are the “people”, those who are the subjects of national ideals and the national imaginary, as opposed to those who are not, even if they govern and were born in Peru. <br /><br />Now, the Church has moved into this space of defining the people and their voice. Though Catholics no longer are the exclusive Church in Peru, they still are the largest and are showing their weight in their ability to convoke people. But, unlike the movements in Bolivia, this is driven by elites--transnational elites-- who use their control over institutions, such as schools, based on their political religious commitments, such as the very conservative Opus Dei to which the Arch Bishop of Cusco belongs, to convoke people to appear in the streets and there by claim people-ness. It is this latter, the abstraction "people" taking form in bodies on the street, that is important and not the issue of how they were convoked. <br /><br />In Bolivia, there was social organization, to be sure, but that did not account for the massive uprisings that overthrew the government, after first driving out Bechtel. The abstraction of "people" took a very different form, as a result, even if its ostensible meaning was the same. <br /><br />The Church has thrown itself in a struggle for representation, that is to say, the right of elites to agglomerate people and give them voice, like the man at the microphone speaking for the girls, who then would scream, and for the unborn who cannot speak. The lower classes claim to be “the people” and to be the “voice” of the nation, through massive demonstrations without clear convocation and organization of power, while the elites are claiming the democratic notion that leaders are there to re-present the people, who express their “voice” primarily through voting in elections and occasionally appearing when convoked to demonstrate. <br /><br />This is a fascinating struggle over representation, over semiotics and the basic function of meaning whose end is nowhere in sight. <br /><br />The Arch Bishop just spoke. He said he was not speaking for religious ends per se, but for all people. He said “natural law” goes beyond religion and beyond culture, and so is “scientifically demonstrated”. Of course, at that point, his ties and his following authority that comes from beyond the nation and its culture are no longer important. Rather he speaks as a Peruvian citizen and as someone who is speaking a "universal truth" which should, therefore, be the property of all peoples. <br /><br />In Bolivia part of the uprising was over culture, specifically the place of multiple cultures within a common national space. Although analysts would point out that the neo-liberal government led by Sanchez de Losada which was overthrown, was also based on culture, it claimed to be based on universal principles of “economic law” and management science. It held these to be beyond culture and, as a result, Bolivia could be multicultural as long as the cultures accepted the reduced space left once management science and economics take their just place as universals, ostensibly beyond culture. <br /><br />People rejected this. They heard the gringo-accent of Goni and so perceived a cultural putsch in the technocentric efforts. The current government and constitution now places culture front and center in government. <br /><br />The Church’s efforts to create a “natural law” that just happens to give power to religion and the Church’s theology is an important part of current Church politics all over the world. Pope Benedict XVI, following Pope John Paul II, makes this argument a centerpiece of his philosophy, his management, and his efforts to build a stronger place for the Church as this century progresses. <br /><br />In the meantime children are marching in Cusco’s main square and dancing to popuar children’s music, besides carrying signs in favor of that wonderfully poetic abstraction “life” that, as Giorgio Agamben observes, “has never been defined as such.” Agamben continues to argue that it is precisely the undefined nature of life of it, and the voicelessness we might add, that makes it such a powerful image. It is generally defined by its contrastive relationship with death, like in the argument about abortion and natural law, as if that were in actual fact a definition. <br /><br />Agamben continues “what remains so indeterminate is articulated and divided, on every occasion, through a set of gaps and oppositions that dress it with a decisive strategic function in domains that are apparently so disparate as philosophy, theology, politics, and, only later, medicine and biology. It would seem, in our culture, to be that which cannot be defined but, precisely for which, that for which it must be incessantly articulated and divided.”<br /><br />In these terms, it is fascinating that life is separated from culture, especially since there is no human without culture. The idea defies logic and splits living people into abstractions that can be manipulated for ideological ends, especially the building of so-called universals that are somehow “natural” and beyond human diversity. <br /><br />Nevertheless, the political efforts to fight semiotic battles over representation, whether in engineering of raw material exploitation in the Amazon, or of bringing school children into the streets to fight for an undefined and perhaps undefinable abstraction are important events of our time. <br /><br />I am just fascinated, while sitting in this cafe on Cusco plaza, that the response to the order which is more than an order “¡Seamos la Voz!”--Let’s be the voice--flirts with not just giving voice to the abstract voiceless, but to creating a noun, “The Voice”, which like life must remain undefined at the same time it must be articulated and divided for all kinds of other ends. <br /><br />Agamben writes that the fantasy of the natural man, prior to culture, generally has implied humans without language, since language seems the place where human diversity operates at the same time it is what we people have in common--besides simply our bodies--and which makes us homo sapiens. So there must be an empty signifier, The Voice, to represent this human quality, but which can have the characteristics of no language to function and no specific meaning beyond this fact. It is created by declaration, not by speaking and being heard. So when the man shouts, “Let’s be the voice” the answer can only be a scream devoid of the normal meaning of screams but invoked by the declaration. It’s meaning lies in its following the declaration, and not in the ordinary processes by which human sound acquires meaning and language. <br /><br />I know that is very abstract, but I think it important, if we wish to make sense of these children screaming in the street in response to a man, speaking for the Church, and creating The Voice. <br /><br />They are done for now. Lunch time is coming. Already I can smell garlic sautéeing in the cafe’s kitchen. A group of blond, Dutch speaking twenty-somethings just occupied a table next to mine. The sound of their vowels and consonants, with meanings that I sometimes get and sometimes don’t have now filled the space that used to belong to the demonstration. <br /><br />I guess this raises the inevitable question of whether meanings are somehow outside of language and hence, potentially, universal. Again the trouble of representation and semiotics and the politics here. But, I shall leave it for now. My stomach is beginning to growl after all. I love garlic!<br /><br /><br /><br />Reference: Giorgio Agamben, Lo Abierto, (Buenos Aires: Adriana Hidalgo Editores, 2002), p 31. Translation mine.David Knowltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12525999021776853508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391799044735518856.post-30545075675456865912010-03-14T18:50:00.004-06:002011-12-28T00:26:40.008-07:00Memory in a Vibrating StringThe night is like a plucked string. It just recently came on stage and now it vibrates. Copacabana’s main square almost lacks room for all the people who are there to hear the night’s sound.<br /><a name='more'></a> <br /><br />Carnival ended last Tuesday in most of the world, but here it began the next day, Ash Wednesday. Catholics throughout the world go to mass that day and get a smudge of ash on their foreheads to remind them “ashes to ashes and dust to dust.” But in this town and province it began that day. <br /><br />Wednesday I left La Paz and got off the bus before its stop, when a small group of tourists with guide descended to visit the Basilica. I followed them down the cobblestoned street and entered the Basilica’s atrium in their shadow. But when they stopped to look, I kept walking, bag with clothes and camera on one shoulder and laptop case on the other. <br /><br />As I got close I heard native flutes playing on the plaza. A stroke of fear beat against me in worry that I might have arrived too late for something important. I strode across the atrium, to the back of the blind man who sits on the ground by the main gate and scratches on his violin the pilgrim’s song. As I approached the gate, the first band stopped and another began. <br /><br />On the side of the plaza where the sun rose, a band of tarkhas was gathered. The tarkha is a flute made of a block of wood, often mahogany, which is played so as to draw from the instrument a rich and conflictive set of overtones. The band contains different sizes, so the melody haunts among shifting overtones. One hears a sheen of dissonant sounds and pulsing rhythm, until one listens closely and the melody appears. Pounding bass drums and the scratch of snares keeps the tarkha players in the same pace.<br /><br />On the Southwest corner a band of bamboo flutes called pinkillos stood lost in the music they played. The pinkillo, though a sweet flute, is played similarly to the tarkha. The players on pikillos of different sizes draw a rich set of overtones into which they can nest the melody, while snare and bass drums mark the rhythm. <br /><br />I walked by the pinkillos glad to see only a single couple dancing, dressed in ordinary clothes. Before me, Mery and Roxana sat on the stoop of Roxana’s store, in the bright sunlight, eating ice cream bars. “Where have you lost yourself?” the asked me. <br /><br />“I’ve been in La Paz. I thought I was going to come back yesterday, but I couldn’t get out of La Paz”<br /><br />“Well, you didn’t miss much. Today is when the fiesta starts. It is the competition of the bands, representing two of the old four quarters of Copacabana. It used to be people would fight, but now they just dance with different bands and shout at each other.<br /><br />“It is good you re here. You can dance with us on Saturday. You need to get yourself a clown costume and then we can dance.”<br /><br />After leaving my belongings at Don Roberto’s Hostel, I walked back to the plaza. A stack of beer cases had appeared before the pinkillada, and the single dancing couple had another with them now. Another band of pinkillos has set itself up on the west side of the plaza, while the tarkeada on the east now had a good sized group of people, with serpentine around their necks dancing in front of them. The tarkha band and its dancers were not from the town of Copacabana, but were from the nearby countryside. While the other two groups did represent the two contrasting sides of the historic town. <br /><br />A story says that, when the image of the Virgin of Copacabana was brought from Potosi, by way of La Paz, to Copacabana, the people of the northern half blocked her entrance to try to keep her out of the town, since the people of the southern half were the ones bringing her. There was a pitched battle and the southerners were able to break through and escort the Virgin to her new home, where she still stands. <br /><br />Today, though, the Virgin is not involved, but the two sides compete. Not the kind of competition in which one side or the other wins, this is one of endless struggle, as the two sides bands play simultaneously and their dances spin and jump, shouting their zones‘ name against the other side. <br /><br />During the day, the bands and dancers mostly stay outside the town, on the flatlands below its several thousand year mound. But after dark they return and pluck the nights string. They pirouette and bounce, circle and zigzag, and the night vibrates with sound. <br /><br />Thousands of people line the square to watch and hear. <br /><br />Last night I crossed through the center of the square to go from one group to another. A woman in her late fifties, early sixties, spoke to me. Dressed as a cholita, dark hat bowler perched jauntily on her head though lines creased her face, she said “Do you remember me?”<br /><br />I looked at her and knew that I knew her, but I could not grasp where or when. “Yes. I know you. Are you...?” I paused.<br /><br />“I am. You remember my son Nestor.”<br /><br />“Oh, wow! Mrs. Condori. My gosh. It has been so long. Fifteen years since I saw you last. ¡Wow!”<br /><br />The sounds of the night were gone. I was in shock and had no words. For fifteen years, every time I came to Copacabana I remembered and wondered where this family was. But I did not know how to reach them. <br /><br />In 1985, I came to Copacabana to do research for my doctoral dissertation. I knew almost no one in the town. At first I stayed at “La Porteñita” just across from the market. Edelberto Barrigola was the manager and every time I come to Copacabana I see him, his brothers and sisters, and now their children. I know details of their lives. <br /><br />David, Edelberto’s youngest brother, twelve-years old, met me as I descended from my bus that day. He offered rooms to any who would listen. But none did. Struck by his serious look--one he still wears, I followed him to his brother’s place. David’s oldest daughter will soon leave for college and he now has two restaurants, including a gleaming Broasted Chicken and french fries place, a big store, and a hotel. Just as then, he works hard and is serious.<br /><br />But I did not continue to stay in the hotel Edelberto managed. I needed something cheaper, quieter, and more long term. So I moved to the “San Jose”. More rustic and removed from the bustle of the town center, it stood on the much quieter Plaza Sucre. My room, on the second floor, looked south onto the plaza and the wooded hills beyond. There I stayed for most of a year. <br /><br />Mrs. Condori and her husband managed the San Jose. Alone, away from my family and friends, I came to depend on them. Their ten year old son, Nestor, would often come to my room and talk to me about school and his friends. But he too was a serious boy. He looked like he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. <br /><br />And often he did. His father would drink and Nestor’s mother would have to go find him, leaving Nestor to manage the hostal. <br /><br />I called him my “abuelito”, my little grandfather. I reversed our roles, only two thirds in jest. He was so reliable, so serious. <br /><br />One day, my friend Marcelo Fernandez, an Argentine journalist who was traveling through South America and stopped in Copacabana for several weeks, and I decided to go to the Island of the Sun. But, after asking around we decided to walk the three leagues to Llamphupata and catch a short boat ride from there to the Island across a narrow stretch of the lake. <br /><br />This was the path the pilgrims took in Inca times. But now, almost every outsider take a boat from Copacabana’s harbor. We asked lots of people, carefully, about the route and how we could recognize our way. But there was just a little bit of uncertainty. <br /><br />The abuelito told us he knew the path and began describing it to us. <br /><br />I don’t remember how, but his parents decided Nestor would be our guide and with him we walked the three leagues and back. He told us stories. He took care of us, a little old man in a child’s body. <br /><br />“Mrs. Condori. How is your husband?” <br />“He died fourteen years ago.”<br /><br />“And, Nestor? How is Nestor?”<br /><br />Last time we spoke was in the plaza, on a bench, under the hot sun on July. My mother was ill and dying. I had lost my job at BYU. I was shriveled inside. <br /><br />Mrs. Condori told me her worries about her boy. He was a good student but did not have opportunities. Her husband was ill, she feared she could not care for her son. She asked if I could take him to the US. I shrank even more inside. I wanted to promise. I wanted to help. But, I knew the US Consulate would probably never give him a visa and I, without a job, could not serve as a guarantee. I could not take him home like he had taken Marcelo and Me. <br /><br />For seven or eight years I could not return to Copacabana. I did not have funding from a University as a Visiting Professor here or there. For some reason, I could get to Peru. If nothing else, it cost less to travel there because it was a major tourist destination. But Bolivia started to seem a memory, a diminishing dream. <br /><br />Still, when on Lake Titicaca I would look across to the invisible other side and remember .<br /><br />When finally I did return, I had no way of contacting the Condori family. The Barrigolas have their stores and the hotels they manage. Them, I could easily find. I would look at the San Jose and remember and wonder, but knew no one who could help me find them. I figured the Abuelito and his family would remain just a memory, one of many losses from leaving BYU. <br /><br />“Nestor lives here. He is married now. Do you want to see him? Come on, I will take you.”<br /><br />It was hard to relate the man with the boy I knew. But we spoke and as memories started coming into the conversation it was obvious we shared things from the past. Interpretations and presentations may have been a bit different but the facts themselves were there, clearly. This was indeed the abuelito. <br /><br />I walk away, much later, with plans to visit the family, with my feet treading through the air. Carnival, with its cacophony of competing bands and pulsing dancers disappeared. Something missing, a hole, a gap, had been filled. Memory was made whole.David Knowltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12525999021776853508noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1391799044735518856.post-5572657493216873972010-02-14T08:14:00.010-07:002011-12-28T00:26:56.324-07:00Notes on a MealThe lake glowed. From where we sat its water gleamed gem-like in the sun. Around us were dahlias as big as plates and roses whose perfume pulled at the air, while we arranged ourselves on a patch of lawn.<br /><a name='more'></a> <br /><br />The Association of Vendors outside the Market of Copacabana had invited Mandy and me to join them for an afternoon in the countryside. Zaida Tudela, who I have known since 1985, had said in no uncertain terms “I want you to be here Monday at three. Don’t you dare forget.”<br /><br />Sunday afternoon she called me in La Paz on the cell phone I had purchased to receive just such calls. “Where have you been the last few days? We haven’t seen you. You are going to be here tomorrow? Aren’t you?”<br /><br />She worries that people will say they will be someplace and then not show. Unfortunately, she has reason to worry in a place where it is hard for people to say no to invitations and so a yes is always unsure and ambivalent. <br /><br />She wanted to check to make sure, since she had already made arrangements with the members of her association to be there and bring food. <br /><br />Mandy and I left Romy and Juan Carlos’ house in a rain storm, Monday morning before eight. Sunday, while everyone else in the household was at church, I had gone down to the baroque Sagarnaga Street filled with its many handicraft markets that open off its narrow and steep cobble-stoned line, to buy a bus ticket to Copacabana. I walked up three blocks of hill, ignoring the men offering me trilobites, and other people hawking weavings, as well as the downward rush of cars and vans, to Diana Tours in the Hotel Sagarnaga. <br /><br />They run a bus back and forth to Copacabana mostly catering to tourists. Although it costs double to take them rather than the local buses, they will pick me up at the ceja instead of making me go down to the cemetery. <br /><br />As I bought the ticket, the lady at the desk said “they will pick you up between 8 and 8:30” to which I responded “Oh come on, they are never there before 8:40 am. We will be there by 8:30.” She took down my cell number and said “ok.” <br /><br />A worry splashed around in my mind, as we boarded a minibus to take us to the ceja. The traffic was heavy and the road filed with falling water. By the time we arrived at the ceja, it was ten after eight and Mandy and I still had to walk down about a quarter mile to the toll booths where we would catch the bus. <br /><br />After we dodged traffic to cross this major artery, I saw our bus waiting. I pulled out my phone to check the time and noticed I had received three messages from an unknown number. Yikes. They had been waiting. But they never arrive early. <br /><br />Today they did. The door opened and the assistant asked if we were David and Mandy. Ten minutes they were there before we arrived. Ouch! Luckily the bus waited for us. <br /><br />When our bus pulled into Copacabana, it could not ease into its parking spot because a hundred or so people were walking down the street in formation behind a standard. We waited and waited. I could not see their banner to know who they were or where they were from, but from their dress I knew they had walked from a rural community. I wondered if they were protesting, but heard no chants. I wondered what was going on? But, I just had questions and no answers. <br /><br />After the bus parked, Mandy and I got off and followed the group of people. We got ourselves settled in Copacabana and then met again by the market. Already lots of women who normally would be sitting by bundles of merchandise selling throughout they day, had gathered. Their stands were not set up and instead the had <span style="font-style: italic;">q’ipis</span>, as they are called, either on their backs or at their feet. A <span style="font-style: italic;">q’ipi</span> is something wrapped in a carrying cloth, with its matched bands of brightly colored stripes that shade towards a contrast, which Dernise Arnold describes as having the bilateral symmetry of the body . <br /><br />As we were greeting Doña Marcia, at three pm the time we were supposed to be there. Zaida, resplendent in her red hat, came running up. “hermano, hermano where have you been. I have called you three times on your cell phone and you did not answer. I was worried you were still in La Paz.”<br /><br />“You called me? But I haven’t received any calls? See there are no missed calls listed on my phone.”<br /><br />“Yes, I called you because I was worried you had not come. You know people often don’t follow through when they say they will do something. I was worried. Your battery must be low. That must be why you didn’t get my calls.”<br /><br />A man, the only man among the vendors, Don Mario, said “we have a little ceremony we want to do” As he spoke, Zaida came up and put rose petals on my head. They did not stay but soon slipped off my bald pate and fell to the ground, perfuming the air in their fall. <br /><br />Mario made a speech and I made a speech. All the women, one by one, tried to get petals to stay on my head. <br /><br />After the ceremony, Zaida looked at me and said, “shall we walk or shall we take a car?”<br /><br />“That is up to you,” I replied. "It is a beautiful day and I enjoy walking but if you wish we can take a car.”<br /><br />“Oh no. We will walk.” And walk we did. Across the plaza and down the slope to the flat land below Copacabana, we walked. We could see a crowd of people in the soccer field, enclosed by red brick walls, and could occasionally hear some sound. <br /><br />“What do you think is going on in the ampliado,” Zaida queried the other women. <br /><br />I like that word, ampliado. In English we would call it a gathering or a meeting, but in the Spanish it comes from root verb to make larger. In other words it is something made large or broad. It is a public meeting to discuss something probably important of public interest. <br /><br />“Who is the ampliado for,” I asked. “It is for the campesinos. The mayor called it to discuss municipal stuff.” Ok. So that is why the people were marching in behind their standard. They were representing their community. It looked like they were probably all the adults of whatever community it was. <br /><br />We continued walking along the now dirt road with its ruts and puddles of mud. “Do you see that two story house with arched windows,” Doña Zaida pointed. “That is my friend’s house. We are going to their garden. You can see it just beyond where all the roses are.”<br /><br />Though still rural, this area was beginning to sprout houses to compete with the fields of purple flowered potatoes, dark blue flowered lupines with edible seeds (called tarwi), with lots of yellow flowered wild mustard splotching here and there. Soon it will be another neighborhood of the town as it grows. Already it has a name “Villa Bella Cruz”, the “town of the beautiful cross.” I think they would have called it bella vista, or beautiful view, since the view over the fields to the lake was stunning, but that name is already taken for a neighborhood higher up on the hill that looks west to the lake, instead of north. <br /><br />The garden had roses, mounded with blooms. Dahlias bigger than hands stood here and there. Snap dragons, called in local Spanish toad’s mouth, shook like the belled legs of dancers. But there weren’t just flowers; among them opened furrows of potatoes, tarwi, fava beans and peas. <br /><br />On a modest patch of well cut grass someone had opened two big, multicolored umbrellas to protect from the intense, highland sun, as well as a table and a wicker love seat. Two of the lawn’s edges held rock and concrete walls that could serve as benches.<br /><br />As we entered this carefully cared for space of beauty, I was ushered to the bench and table while all the women dressed in the broad skirts of a pollera, which were most of them, sat on the ground. Don Mario continued standing for a bit, while the women in skirts that could be found in other countries sat on the low walls. Though also ushered to the wicker bench, Mandy went and sat with her friends, smiling and laughing with them. <br /><br />While Zaida laid over the table a commercial table cloth made in the design of a carrying cloth, on top of which she placed a brightly colored carrying cloth with coca and said “let’s chew coca”, Mario came and sat by me. I picked up some coca leaves and began chewing them, while thinking about blowing across them a prayer to the mountains as in done in Peru but not here. Mario interrupted my thought and asked “What exactly has the motive of your work been here in Copacabana.”<br /><br />I almost giggled, because a couple of weeks ago Edelberto put his arm on my shoulder, in his shadowed store, and said “David, people are saying you work for the CIA. I keep setting them straight but that is what they are saying. Even my nephew has doubts about you. He too wonders if you are working for the US spy agency.”<br /><br />“Ah Elber [the shorter form of his name]. People always think that. They wonder how a gringo can come and spend so much time here while not doing the things most people think of as work. But, if I were a spy I would probably make more money and, anyway, the CIA is more likely to hire and send Bolivians than me, because they would fit in.”<br /><br />“No, David. I know you are not a spy but I wanted you to know that people were wondering.”<br /><br />I wanted to laugh, because this issue comes up constantly. But I did not laugh, because of how serious it is. It reflects a real concern to local people to try to fit me into their patterns of normal behavior and life. It also is made more demanding by the current tension between the US government and Bolivia. Both are shaking their fist at each other. Just recently Bolivia erupted in outrage at the US sending troupes to Haiti, since it looked for all the world here like an occupation force. And, people had such great hopes when Obama replaced Bush. <br /><br />A week ago Celestino, a man from a nearby community, was laughing and playing with me until he asked “where are you from.” When I said “The United States” he turned away and got very serious while muttering “Obama is evil.”<br /><br />I kept on talking with him, even getting him to explain how he was angry at the “occupation of Haiti”. But he and I parted friends. He even said hello to me two days later in the street with a big smile on his face. <br /><br />So I figured I better answer Mario carefully and in detail. I told him I was an anthropologist and that I had first spent time in a community on the other side of the mountain, before coming to live and talk to people in Copacabana. I then went over a list of the topics I had written about. <br /><br />“I am writing too,” he replied. “Since I I have lived here my whole life I am writing about my vivencias, [experiences of life, adventures]. You don’t have vivencias here because you have only visited. I am writing from the depth of my living.”<br /><br />“You know in Copacabana there are four historic neighborhoods, although we now officially have ten. Each one has its history and customs. I am from Cundisa. We are part of the lower moiety which includes the community of Marka Cusco where Tito Yupanqui was born. You know who he is? He sculpted the Virgin.<br /><br />“They used to call us toad-herders because of all the little toads that are born here on these flat lands every year. There used to be a lot more than there are now.”<br /><br />“Yeah,” I thought “and Cundisa is right next to Qolquepata, the place of silver, which opens on to the twin hills on whose back side is the toad’s mouth, an entrance into the underground by the lake from which all wealth flows. And, despite your reference to a descendent of the Inca, the lower moiety is supposed to be the moiety of the natives who were in opposition to the Incas.” But I said nothing more than “uh huh”.<br /><br />“We maintain an ancient dance for Carnaval called phuna. We don’t use modern bands or costumes from La Paz for it. It is ours and our heritage. We keep it alive. Just like our neighborhoods, each of the hills has a tradition. This is what I am writing.”<br /><br />I encouraged him and said I would like to read his writings. He said that he was hoping the municipal government would open a library where writings of lived experiences like his could be stored for younger people to read since things are changing so fast. Traditions are being lost. <br /><br />Zaida called out “Ok everyone let’s put out the food you brought.” Mario got up and went to sit on a chair off to the side, while Mandy came to sit by me. <br /><br />As the women laid down two very colorful carrying cloths on the ground on which they placed two white, flour-sack cloths, the woman who owned the garden brought two plates of fried trout which she sat before Mandy and me. She also brought out two platters of french fries as well as a big platter of salad--tomatoes, onions, cucumber, and shredded lettuce--and another one of fried fish cut in half widthwise, that were set on the table along with a condiment tray of oil, vinegar, and salt. <br /><br />On the ground, women untied their q’epis. As if from a womb they pulled out boiled potatoes, white and sparkling, along with off-white tuntas and dark-gray ch’unos (both of which are freeze dried, reconstituted potatoes), and chalky gray uma khaya (a freeze dried tuber called oca that you now can get and grow in the US). One woman opened a bundle of sweet potatoes with dark skin and orange streaked flesh. All this food was scattered in a row along the cloth so that everyone could have equal access to it. Another woman had a bundle of fritters (called tortillas) made with egg, flour and green onion, I think, while another had a bundle of different fritters made with a filling of tomatoes and onions, I think. People tossed these along the row to distribute them evenly as well. One woman had a round of fresh cheese she sliced and kept close, while other women had different kinds of hot sauce, from a llajua (made with tomatoes, hot peppers, and an herb), to picante (made with dried yellow peppers, ground and mixed with boiled egg). The pieces of fried fish were added to the long pile. <br /><br />“David and Amanda. This is what we call an apthapi, where everyone brings something and we share. Down here on the ground are what we call fiambres or phutis. This is the everyday food in rural communities.”<br /><br />Everyone started to eat. Zaida gave Mandy and me the two plates, each of which had a butterflied fried trout on it along with three off white tuntas with a slice of cheese cooked inside them. And, we asked for other items from the row of food below us: fritters, potatoes, camotes ( the local name for sweet potatoes), and hot sauces. In turn we passed to them more of the fried fish from the platter, the fired potatoes, and the salad. Food was moving back and forth in an exchange that defined at least two worlds, one of locals and one of foreigners, as well as the solidary world among the locals of cholitas and ladies of dress. There was also the world of men and that of women. <br /><br />We ate. The food was delicious. Though I'm not much of a fan of trout because of the fishy taste it often has, this trout was mild and delicious reminding me more of salmon than the rainbow trout at home. But neither trout nor I are native to this town, so we were at the table. But pieces of trout went to the women along with all the other non-native things. Potatoes are native, but french fries are not. Native was not only defined by origin but mode of dress and preparation. <br /><br />As we ate, people were laughing and talking in three languages. Among the women there was a lot of playing around in Aymara. I joined this conversation, even though my command of the language is weak. They had fun testing me, teasing me and laughing. Somehow I did not hear the word jayu, or salt, when someone asked for it to season the salad I had passed. Everyone except Mandy spoke and understood at least some Aymara. Those not from Copacabana had the least command. The women giggled and told me the word over and over. We also spoke Spanish--all of us to one degree or another, And Mandy and I rarely spoke English to one another.<br /><br />When the meal was over, having woven together different kinds of difference and restated different similarities, we were served a glass of wine and/or a glass of papaya soda. Many of us poured drops to the earth to share our feast with her and we continued our multilingual conversing.<br /><br />“Hermanas (sisters), what are we going to do about the seven or eight people who did not show up? Everyone was supposed to come and they did not.” To this complaint/question from one of the woman, others responded “we should fine them”. People muttered about that, and then someone said “what about if we ban them from selling one day, a busy day.” Zaida jumped at that. She is the president of their association and so had to speak the decision. “Yes. That is good we will not let them sell one day. Who all isn’t here.”<br /><br />Still there was food on the cloths. “Come on, we have to finish all the food.” Instead the left overs where put into plastic bags and redistributed among the women, each with an assortment of what was brought so they could take it home. <br /><br />A list was put together of the missing women and not too much later we began leaving the garden. We took the wicker love seat back to the house along with the big umbrellas. People shook hands to say goodbye, and some people air kissed. <br /><br />A few of us, Zaida, Amanda, and I among them began the walk back to town. Although it looked like the meeting was over in the soccer field, still clumps of people could be seen. “I wonder why the women did not come today,” I asked. Zaida said, “They had to go to the ampliado. That is why they did not come." <br /><br />The hill back to the town rose steeply before us. We slowly lifted our selves up it as the Basilica was increasingly made a shadow from the bright light of afternoon behind it. I kept thinking about how this rise was not a natural hill, but came from making a temple platform in the ancient past and then thousands of years of settlement on top of it. My thoughts were interrupted.<br /><br />“Have you ever heard the toads croak here at night? They can be really loud.”<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Y9ZfATALwKo/S3gXUgwo10I/AAAAAAAAAD4/xAjuGcfrEFQ/s1600-h/DSC_0017.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5438122191208634178" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Y9ZfATALwKo/S3gXUgwo10I/AAAAAAAAAD4/xAjuGcfrEFQ/s320/DSC_0017.JPG" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; height: 214px; width: 320px;" /></a><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Y9ZfATALwKo/S3gXVC3ugjI/AAAAAAAAAEA/cDyJeuWseq0/s1600-h/DSC_0037.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5438122200365171250" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Y9ZfATALwKo/S3gXVC3ugjI/AAAAAAAAAEA/cDyJeuWseq0/s320/DSC_0037.JPG" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; height: 214px; width: 320px;" /></a><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Y9ZfATALwKo/S3gXV_YYSuI/AAAAAAAAAEI/Ybz6GRfaiTM/s1600-h/DSC_0050.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5438122216608254690" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Y9ZfATALwKo/S3gXV_YYSuI/AAAAAAAAAEI/Ybz6GRfaiTM/s320/DSC_0050.JPG" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; height: 320px; width: 214px;" /></a><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Y9ZfATALwKo/S3gXWPZkwOI/AAAAAAAAAEQ/xCW6U1WsfYU/s1600-h/DSC_0073.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5438122220908232930" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Y9ZfATALwKo/S3gXWPZkwOI/AAAAAAAAAEQ/xCW6U1WsfYU/s320/DSC_0073.JPG" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; height: 214px; width: 320px;" /></a>David Knowltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12525999021776853508noreply@blogger.com2